Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran vs. Talend – Overview

About Talend

Talend is a Java code-based data management tool with a workflow user interface. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. Talend is typically leveraged as an enterprise tool with a suite of data management solutions. Talend charges users per seat, which is a key consideration for growing data teams looking to scale. While Talend offers 1,000+ non-native connectors, their fully-coded, open-source approach comes with a steep learning curve for users who aren’t familiar with their interface.

About Fivetran

Fivetran is a managed extract and load tool that was created in 2012. Fivetran is headquartered in Oakland, California with offices around the world. They have a large customer base and are considered an easy-to-use choice for their ease of connection. Fivetran charges users on monthly active rows (MAR), which is the number of unique primary keys moved from source to target within one calendar month.

About Rivery

Rivery was founded in 2018 from an internal tool at one of the world’s largest data consulting firms. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv, London, and Austin. Rivery is a fully-managed SaaS platform, which provides a unified solution for data ingestion, transformation, and workflow orchestration.

The biggest differentiator is the completeness of Rivery’s offering, combining the ease of use of a no-code SaaS with the power and flexibility of a custom-coded solution.

Fivetran vs. Talend – Features

ETL / ELT Tool
Pricing	$12k/user/year or $1170/user/year with unlimited usage	Based on rows	Based on executions and data size
Cloud native and fully managed	No	Yes	Yes
Native connectors	1,000+ (non-native)	150+	200+
Connect to any API source	No	No	Yes
Built-in workflow orchestration	Yes	No	Yes
Python support	No	No	Yes
Reverse ETL	Yes	No	Yes
G2 Rank	4.3 / 5.0	4.2 / 5.0	4.8 / 5.0

Fivetran vs. Talend – Product

Talend

Talend’s solutions include everything from data ingestion and data validation to complex data orchestration and testing APIs for data output. You must download the Talend application onto your desktop in order to perform most processes.

Talend’s products include:

Talend Cloud Data Integration and Talend Cloud Pipeline (included in Talend Cloud)

Talend Cloud Data Integration and Cloud Pipeline function as part of their web application, which doesn’t require the application server to be self hosted, but it’s mainly considered a workflow orchestration tool. Jobs must still be built on their associated desktop tool and then uploaded to the web application for scheduling.

Talend Data Fabric (includes Talend Cloud Pipeline)

Talend Data Fabric is Talend’s fully-featured solution, where users must host everything from the application server to the desktop software. The solution comes with a host of functions, including certain AI/ML capabilities, data ingestion, and more.

Fivetran

Fivetran is an EL (extraction and load) tool, where the transformation component of the ETL/ELT process is done by an embedded version of dbt Core.

Fivetran provides 150+ native connectors with support for all main databases and data warehouses as targets. Custom connectors are possible with Fivetran, but they must be built via Cloud Functions, which are then called by Fivetran. These Cloud Functions come at an additional cost to run and need to be maintained.

Building and maintaining custom connectors in-house and outside of Fivetran can be done to handle custom data needs outside of Fivetran’s capabilities.

Rivery

Rivery’s SaaS offering provides several data stack products in a single platform. This includes ELT (data ingestion) with over 200+ fully-managed connectors, advanced workflow orchestration, data operations (full support for the development lifecycle), reverse ETL (data activation), and full Python support.

Data Connectors: Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran

Fivetran includes line and function connectors, enabling developers to create and maintain custom ones for APIs. It offers 300+ pre-built connectors and supports over 10 destinations like data warehouses, databases, and data lakes. It also includes Oracle and DB2 HVA connectors which are reserved for users who opt for higher-tiered plans.

Talend

When comparing Fivetran vs. Talend, the latter offers 40+ pre-built connectors to help create custom processors and connectors. The specialized connectors for mass data movement are available when purchasing higher-tiered plans. Users can take advantage of over 1,000 out-of-the-box processors and connectors. Unstructured data capability and specialized data moving connectors is another perk Talend offers.

Rivery

Rivery offers 200+ native connectors and a range of pre-built data templates Rivery offers unlimited options for users to build custom connectors. In helping to improve the workflow, Rivery continuously increases the connector list by adding new ones. These connectors can be integrated with any analytics, marketing, database, accounting and finance, and other sources. Users can use standard SQL extraction and CDC database replication to extract data during the process of data integration.

CDC: Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran

Fivetran uses the log-based Change Data Capture (CDC) concept that allows the movement and replication of data from the source to a chosen destination. This allows data teams to carry out real-time analytics. Fivetrans connectors have a CDC-optimized technology that allows high-volume and efficient data movement. The pre-built connectors help centralize and transform data from numerous SaaS and other on-premises data sources to other cloud destinations.

Talend

At the same time, this solution allows Talend users to perform continuous data replication without needing heavy technical skills. It offers non-intrusive, end-to-end CDC capabilities in both multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It’s a helpful tool for large enterprises working with large data centers from various sources. They can store the essential data in one place and have real-time insight.

Rivery

Compared to Fivetran vs. Talend, Rivery’s CDC tool minimizes resource expenditure while automatically syncing your cloud data warehouses with databases. This maximizes resource efficiency, offering fast data access. At the same time, the CDC tool offers multichannel compatibility, flexibility, and stability. Rivery’s CDC offers gathering data from numerous sources in significantly less time and without the danger of exhausting the system.

Schema Changes: Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran

Schema changes significantly impact data accuracy because they point to alteration of the data structure. In the Fivetran vs. Talend comparison, Fivetran automates end-to-end ELT pipelines using dbt Core transformations.

Keep in mind that not all destinations and sources support such pre-built models. Therefore, if no pre-built data models exist, you’ll need to contact their support team and learn SQL.

Talend

The schema changes in Talend are done through Studio, the comprehensive data transformation feature often used by data engineers. Using a low-code environment, you can execute numerous data manipulation tasks. You’ll notice an immediate change reflected in the corresponding schema.

Rivery

Rivery can identify and handle schema changes by extracting and transforming data from different sources. It automatically detects the change and updates the schema to match the new structure.

You can connect APIs, databases and cloud storage, among others, and perform field-level mapping. This means identifying the transformation and loading process of the data.

Fivetran vs. Talend – Pricing

Talend

Talend Cloud is $12k/user/year or $1170/user/year with unlimited usage. Talend Data Fabric offers custom pricing, which is typically more expensive than their Talend Cloud offering.

Fivetran

Fivetran’s pricing is consumption based. Their pricing model is controlled by monthly active rows (MAR), which is the number of unique primary keys moved from source to target within one calendar month. For some use cases this can make Fivetran’s pricing difficult to estimate.

Fivetran offers a 14-day free trial for new users.

Rivery

Rivery provides both, on-demand pay-as-you-go pricing, and annual contracts. Both pay-as-you-go and annual pricing are available for all plans.

Pricing is based on a credit system, which starts at $0.75 per credit. Database source pricing is based on total volume of data transferred. App and API-source pricing is based on the number of pipeline executions.

Rivery doesn’t charge by the number of databases or tables you’re loading into your data warehouse, nor does it charge by the number of rows or sync frequency.

All Rivery pricing plans include:

• Access to all 200+ fully-managed connectors
• Unlimited users
• Runtime environments
• Reverse ETL
• Change Data Capture 

Learn more about Rivery pricing on Rivery’s pricing page or click here to learn more about Rivery’s approach to pricing.

Fivetran vs. Talend – Support

Talend

Talend offers support through their documentation, Talend community, as well as through an online ticketing system.

Talend’s Data Integration G2 user rating for quality of support is 7.1/10 with an industry average of 8.6/10 for on-premise data integration tools on G2.

Fivetran

Fivetran offers support through in-platform support tickets. They do not provide training services as part of their support offerings.

Fivetran’s G2 user rating for quality of support is 7.8/10 with an industry average of 8.5/10 for ETL tools on G2.

Rivery

Rivery offers 24/7 global support as well as onboarding services and dedicated customer success services, which vary by plan. Support is engineering led and year over year, Rivery has been awarded “Easiest to do Business with” by G2 in the category of ETL tools.

Rivery’s G2 user rating for quality of support is 9.9/10, the highest in its category with an industry average of 8.5/10 for ETL tools on G2.

Fivetran vs. Talend – Ease of Use

Designed with different users in mind, Fivetran vs. Talend prove to be solid tools in ETL. More advanced users searching for a large number of connection opportunities choose Talend. On the other hand, beginners opt for Fivetran because it allows them to connect to common data sources without needing coding knowledge.

Rivery

The Rivery data integration platform is user-friendly and offers automated data processes. Businesses of various sizes can easily manage and transform internal and external data sources in the cloud and unlock numerous hidden possibilities.

Architecture: Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran

Fivetran allows seamless connectivity between sources, and the serverless architecture enables excellent scalability and performance capabilities. It’s a fully managed tool with a zero-maintenance approach. It’s a tool primarily designed for cloud environments, but the hybrid connectors feature enables on-premises systems’ support. Using the Extract-Load extraction process, raw data is moved from the source system directly into the target system.

Talend

Talend’s unified architecture meets the data governance and integration needs of today’s businesses. It helps to add real-time decision-making and offers data with valuable insights. Users will find that Talend is divided into cloud infrastructure and local networks. The former is used to set access and restrictions and delegate tasks because it features the cloud engine and applications. The latter concentrates on the Talend Studio and the Remote Engine Gen2.

Rivery

Rivery’s multitenant architecture uses customer-specific Tenant ID, allowing access and privilege based on user roles. Compared to Fivetran vs. Talend, Rivery extensively uses AWS security features to monitor access and activity to spot anomalies and improve responsiveness. The databases of each client is invisible to the others and the importing and exporting of data in a separate data warehouse is done based on assigned access permissions and privileges.

Deployment Options: Fivetran vs. Talend

Fivetran

Fivetran offers a fully-on SaaS experience, enabling data engineers to keep their focus on core tasks. It simplifies the data integration processes, but it has no self-hosting options since it’s not open source. Users benefit from the automatic updates and seamless scaling capabilities of the managed service model. This means no worries about managing the underlying resources.

Talend

Designed for ETL work, Talend is an open source, allowing you to build your own data connectors based on personal specifications. Once done, users can deploy the data to test or production. Azure DevOps and Jenkins are Talend’s main deployment tools, with the possibility of using a third-party integration tool. However, keep in mind that Talend won’t guarantee the effectiveness of the latter. Those in need of detailed guidance through the deployment process should visit the Talend Academy.

Rivery

Rivery’s Environment allows users to deploy test environments and achieve unique objectives. They can simultaneously use the platform by opening it to both internal and external teams. Run exclusively on Amazon Web Services (AWS), users can modify the software based on needs or revert it to the original form. The software or Deployment package consists of Connections, Rivers, River Groups, and Variables.

Fivetran vs. Talend – Summary

Talend

Talend is worth considering for large, enterprise teams, supported by seasoned Java developers. The tool offers a suite of data management solutions for different use cases, but pricing remains a key consideration with per-seat pricing and infrastructure overhead costs.

Key benefits when evaluating Talend include:

• Robust data orchestration capabilities
• Some AI/ML capabilities, allow data scientists to model data
• Data governance
• Big data streaming
• The ability to treat sources as destinations 

Limitations of Talend include: 

• Desktop design reliance 
• Infrastructure overhead 
• Complex configuration and workflow creation 
• Non-native connectors 

Fivetran

Fivetran is a great option for teams looking for an easy-to-use data integration tool. To implement an end-to-end ETL/ELT solution you can leverage different tools like, dbt for transformation, Airflow for orchestration, and Hightouch or Census for reverse ETL.

Key benefits when evaluating Fivetran include: 

• Ease of connection
• ERD/normalized schemas for each SaaS solution
• Embedded dbt Core with custom dbt models

Limitations of Fivetran as an ETL/ELT tool include: 

• No proprietary transformation capabilities
• Custom connectors need to be built and maintained via Cloud Functions
• No developer capability to allow you to extend Fivetran capabilities
• No reverse ETL capabilities
• No orchestration capabilities

Fivetran vs. Talend – A Third Choice

Looking for alternatives? A third choice to consider is Rivery.

Rivery’s fully managed SaaS offering addresses the entire data flow journey and development lifecycle by providing a unified, cloud-native solution for both technical and non-technical users.

This offering includes ELT (data ingestion) with over 200+ fully managed connectors, advanced workflow orchestration and scheduling, data operations, reverse ETL (data activation), and full Python support.

Rivery provides global support, onboarding services, and dedicated customer success services, which vary by plan. Rivery’s G2 user rating for quality of support is 9.9/10, the highest in its category with an industry average of 8.5/10 for ETL tools on G2.

Rivery pricing includes pay-as-you-go and annual contracts, both of which are available for all plans. Pricing is based on a credit system, which starts at $0.75 per credit. River doesn’t charge by the number of databases or tables you’re loading into your data warehouse, nor does it charge by the number of rows or sync frequency.

When evaluating Rivery in comparison to other ETL/ELT tools, the biggest differentiator of Rivery is the completeness of its offering, combining the ease of use of a no-code SaaS with the power and flexibility of a custom-coded solution.