The right data integration solution can save engineering resources, costs, and time, but with more than 150 different tools on the market, finding the right one can be difficult. There’s an overwhelming number of considerations, from free open-source, self-hosted options to cloud-native commercial SaaS products — and everything in between.
Fivetran and Airbyte are both strong, capable products. Choosing one over the other can come down to a few key differences. Let’s take a look at both to help you make an informed decision.
Airbyte vs. Fivetran: At a glance
Airbyte is an open-source data integration engine for building ELT data pipelines that sync data from applications, APIs, and databases to analytical data destinations like data warehouses and data lakes. Airbyte was founded in January 2020 and provides three offerings:
- Open source: A self-hosted option designed for data-mature organizations with strong engineering capabilities.
- Cloud: A cloud-hosted solution designed for organizations seeking managed services with some extensibility.
- Enterprise: A cloud-hosted solution with more white-glove support and “bring your own cloud” options.
Fivetran is an automated data movement platform that offers fully managed data connectors to sync data from SaaS applications, APIs, databases, and other structured data sources into analytical destinations like data warehouses and data lakes. Fivetran was founded in 2012 and has a variety of offerings, all of which are fully-managed, automated, and serve anyone from small startups to large, data-mature enterprises.
As of early May 2025:
Data sources and destination connectors
The ability to connect to data sources and destinations is one of the first and most important considerations for selecting a data integration tool. But there’s more to a connector than meets the eye.
Though both platforms offer hundreds of connectors, “equivalent” connectors are not always truly equivalent. Because Airbyte is an open source platform, many of its connectors are also open source and constrained by the availability and capabilities of community contributors. Whereas all of Fivetran’s connectors are fully supported, developed in-house by 600+ engineers and managed, many of Airbyte’s connectors are built, maintained and supported by the open source community.
Airbyte offers support for most popular data sources and destinations (see a complete list of connectors). Airbyte uses a grading system to help users know what to expect from a connector. According to its documentation, the connectors are divided into three grades: Airbyte Managed, Marketplace, and Custom. The Airbyte Managed connectors are built by Airbyte and are well-tested and robust, while the Marketplace connectors refer to community built and contributed. Custom connectors only receive support if a premium support plan is included in the contract, and maintenance and upgrades remain the responsibility of the customer.
As of early May 2025, about 15 percent of Airbyte’s source connectors are listed as Airbyte Managed, with around 40 percent of destination connectors being Airbyte Managed. Additionally, users can develop connectors for unsupported sources using the Airbyte Connector Development Kit (CDK).
Fivetran offers connectors for the most popular data sources and destinations (see a complete list of connectors), including log-based change data capture connectors for companies with high volume on-premises data processing databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, SAP HANA and DB2. Beyond log-based CDC, Fivetran provides necessary capture capabilities for SAP ERP, both ECC and S/4HANA. In addition, Fivetran enables customers to implement their own connectors using the Fivetran Connector SDK. The Fivetran Connector SDK enables customers to quickly write Python-based data integration scripts while hosting the code in the Fivetran cloud to streamline development and maintenance for custom sources.
In early February 2023, Fivetran announced a new offering that brings more SaaS connectors to market at an accelerated pace, along with a program to deliver them to enterprises by request. Leveraging the latest in generative AI and natural language processing technologies, Fivetran Lite connectors can be built in as little as 30 days, and Fivetran has introduced hundreds of new connectors since its release, bringing the total number of fully-managed connectors to more than 700.
With the acquisition of Census, Fivetran customers gain access to an additional capability in the form of reverse ETL. By syncing enriched data back into operational tools such as CRMs, marketing platforms, support systems, and more, teams can act on insights immediately within tools they already use and automatically trigger workflows.
In summary, though both platforms support hundreds of data sources and destinations, there’s a marked difference in completeness and support between the connectors on each platform. For data engineers capable of software development, Airbyte offers deep extensibility given its open source nature. If you want to change the behavior of a connector, you can modify the source code yourself. In cases where support and testing are needed, customers and users can submit a GitHub issue and await response from Airbyte developers. Fivetran simplifies extensibility with its Connector SDK, allowing for easy configuration for custom sources providing a shorter and clearer path forward to data integration.
For data engineers seeking robust and complete connectors that are fully supported, uniformly maintained and managed 24/7, Fivetran offers a more commercial experience with traditional support models and service level agreements. Customers can expect connectors to be developed in a standardized, non-crowdsourced fashion that follows consistent practices. Furthermore, Fivetran customers don’t have to make infrastructure decisions or concern themselves with resource provisioning, hosting and patching.
Because of the different development models for each platform, we recommend a connector-by-connector comparison for the most important sources and tables to ensure the connector(s) you need most will do the work you need. It’s also worth digging through Fivetran’s extensive entity relationship diagrams, or ERDs, (see this Sailthru example) to understand exactly what tables and columns you can use. In many cases, Fivetran’s connectors can extract from more tables and offer security features (e.g. column blocking and hashing) that Airbyte’s do not. Or, Airbyte may have open source dependencies with known limitations, like its use of Debezium for CDC.
Also consider that data sources may change their APIs or extraction methods with new product releases. Fivetran adjusts its connectors when schemas and APIs change. With Airbyte, you may have to crack open the source code if your connector breaks for whatever reason, or ask the community for help.
Setup and scalability
Setup and scalability options have direct implications on the speed of implementation and the security of data within your organization. Different deployment options offer different tradeoffs in terms of ease of use and security.
Airbyte has two experiences for getting started: self-hosted and cloud. For the self-hosted experience, you would start by:
- Installing Docker
- Spinning up a Docker container to run the Airbyte instance
- Navigating to the Airbyte access UI through your host server
- Mapping source and destination (similar to Fivetran)
- Confirming the connections
- Syncing data
The self-hosted offering requires more than infrastructure — it requires domain expertise in DevOps, network administration, and application security. Going this route also means a greater likelihood of managing, compiling and deploying source code, whether it’s from the community or internal resources that are extending the baseline functionality, like custom connectors. This is an upside for highly technical organizations. But for organizations looking to save money with a free open-source product, self-hosting may be more expensive and complicated than using Airbyte Cloud.
Airbyte’s Cloud setup provides a web-based, cloud-hosted user experience that is clean, simple to use, and can be completed within five minutes:
- Connect to your source
- Connect to your destination
- Select your source data
- Sync data to your destination
Fivetran has two deployment options: an entirely web-based SaaS deployment and a hybrid deployment that combines cloud-based and on-premises data sources while using the web-based Fivetran UI as a control layer. The initial setup for our SaaS deployment can be completed within five minutes:
- Connect to your destination
- Choose your data source(s)
- Select your source data
- Sync data to your destination
Fivetran’s hybrid deployment option blends our easy to use SaaS UI with the security of local data processing. The hybrid agent is installed similarly to the Airbyte self-hosted solution, however the Fivetran Hybrid Agent automatically updates itself whenever a new version is released and will always pull the latest version of our Fivetran built connectors for your data whenever a sync is started.
In summary, both Fivetran and Airbyte cloud provide easy-to-use, intuitive interfaces for setting up data integration. If you want a platform that is zero maintenance, Fivetran can deliver that functionality. Otherwise, if you’re comfortable with some level of manual intervention — such as when your columns or data types change in your schemas — then Airbyte may be sufficient for what you need. Lastly, though the installation process for Airbyte open source and Fivetran Hybrid Deployment are similar, Fivetran’s solution leverages their preexisting best in class SaaS solution to simplify the maintenance and minimize the time to data integration. Start your 14-day free trial with Fivetran today!
Mission-critical work
As organizations become more sophisticated with data and use it to make business decisions, the importance of reliability will grow. Questions of support, uptime, and service level agreements matter less for customers early in the data integration process. However, the more an organization comes to depend on its data, the more important its data integration pipelines become.
Whether self-hosting Airbyte Open Source or Fivetran Hybrid Deployment or using cloud-hosted products from Airbyte or Fivetran, it’s never too early to think about what may be mission critical for your business months or even years into the future.
Airbyte Cloud offers a 99 percent SLA for uptime only on their limited number of “Airbyte managed” connectors (around 15% of source connectors). There is no SLA nor support for Marketplace connectors so you will need to rely on your own technical expertise or that of the third-party developer of the connector. More specifics about Airbyte’s support and SLA can be found in its product release stages documentation.
It’s also worth noting that Airbyte notes that Marketplace connectors “should be used with caution in production” and “might not be feature complete and may experience backward-incompatible, breaking changes with no notice.”
Fivetran is a cloud-hosted, enterprise-ready platform built to support mission-critical systems and flows for every type of customer. The level of support provided depends on the plan selected and all SLA details are transparently provided on its website. All core services (web applications, APIs and replication servers) have a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee with a one percent service credit percentage. Data delivery services also have a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee with a 0.25 percent service credit percentage. All platform-provided (non-custom) connectors are fully supported and maintained by Fivetran. This support also extends to our hybrid deployment solution which utilizes the same connection code as the cloud-hosted deployment.
In summary, Airbyte offers many great features at an attractive financial cost, but mission-critical work is only supported on 15 percent of its data source connectors with a 99 percent SLA on the cloud-hosted platform. Support is either available via the open source community (competing with thousands of unresolved issues and requests) or as part of a paid package. Fivetran provides support for every connector around the clock with support prioritized by the purchased service plan.
Security and privacy
Data integration tools are powerful and can ingest data from a wide variety of sources, including those with sensitive information (PII, classified, proprietary, or competitive). Data access is an important necessity for modern companies, but it must be done responsibly so as to protect one of a business’s most important assets: its data.
According to an IBM study, the average data breach cost in 2024 rose to $4.9 million. Data security must be a critical priority in your search for a data integration solution.
Airbyte offers thorough technical documentation for securing its Open Source and Cloud products. They provide a secure environment for customers following industry standard practices. Airbyte completed the SOC2 Type 2 data compliance certification and plans to undergo an independent review annually. Most Airbyte connectors require keys, secrets, or passwords. Airbyte Cloud encrypts all data using HTTPS. Encryption features vary between platforms.
Fivetran adheres to industry-leading security standards and protocols following an extensive list of compliance and regulatory assurances, including SOC 2 Type 2, PCI-DSS, ISO27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. Fivetran uses two-factor authentication for all user accounts, with strong password controls. In addition, Fivetran allows for Single Sign-On with SAML 2.0 and a list of industry-standard identity providers. Role-based access controls are available to manage user access to connectors and more. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit. These certifications and features extend also to the Hybrid Deployment solution that is offered by Fivetran.
Fivetran offers advanced security features like column blocking and column hashing, which means that specific columns can be blocked or hashed so as not to be stored insecurely or inappropriately in a data destination. These and other features have implications for GDPR and other PII-related compliance requirements.
In summary, Fivetran offers more off-the-shelf security options, configurations and certificates than Airbyte and users who opt for Airbyte Self-Hosted or Fivetran Hybrid Deployment can see additional security measures that can be taken through both.
Advanced features
Depending on the connectors and your company’s specific use case, you might benefit from advanced features in your data integration solution. In this section, we compare Fivetran and Airbyte’s advanced features using the Salesforce data connector as a reference.
Summary: Based on this Salesforce connector comparison, Fivetran has more advanced data integration features. In general, Fivetran’s connectors often have access to more tables and include built-in data security features well beyond what you’ll find in just the Salesforce connector.
Support and documentation
Ongoing vendor support and access to extensive and consistent documentation are essential areas to consider when choosing a data integration solution. These help teams set up faster and resolve issues quickly.
All Fivetran customers have 24/7 access to a team of technical specialists. They work with customers to troubleshoot technical issues as quickly as possible via emails, calls or through its live chat support feature. Fivetran also has extensive documentation to help users answer their questions.
Airbyte customers have access to in-app chat support and a Slack and Discourse community with access to Airbyte team members and other contributors. Enterprise customers have access to dedicated technical support, custom SLAs, training materials, and more.
In summary, both Fivetran and Airbyte offer extensive support and documentation. Fivetran offers a one-stop support portal that enables users to not only contact the support team but also easily request new features.
Pricing and costs
Airbyte and Fivetran pricing is fairly different, so it’s important to pay attention to how each pricing model works and anticipate how these models would work for you and your organization.
Airbyte Cloud and Enterprise plans are priced with “credits” based on the volume of rows or GBs of data (see pricing calculator). Airbyte Cloud credits start at $2.50 apiece and are also sold in bulk at a lower cost. Customers are not charged for data normalization, canceled jobs or writes to databases or destinations.
While we’re on the topic of pricing and costs, it’s worth noting that Airbyte is not entirely free open-source software. According to its License FAQ page, connectors are licensed under a standard MIT license and the Core product is licensed under an ELv2 license, which notably restricts Airbyte customers from providing Airbyte directly to others as a managed service. The premium Cloud and Enterprise features are closed source, but you can stay apprised on its public roadmap.
Fivetran uses a consumption-based pricing model based on the number of rows you sync. Each month’s consumption is calculated based on monthly active rows (MAR) across all connectors and destinations in your account (MAR is the number of distinct primary keys synced from the source system to your destination in a given calendar month). Unit costs decrease as usage increases. Transformations and platform connectors are free of charge, and each connector includes a 14-day trial, even after your free trial period has expired. You can use Fivetran’s pricing calculator to get a sense of cost scaling.
There are five pricing options suited for different use cases, including a Free Plan that launched on February 1, 2023 for smaller-sized companies that can use Fivetran up to 500,000 MAR at no cost. With 1 million monthly active rows on the Enterprise Plan, you get an estimated cost of $1,000 per month.
Both Airbyte and Fivetran offer 14-day trials for their paid products and are fairly transparent in their pricing. We recommend signing up for the free trial periods and log your usage to estimate your costs before committing to a data integration solution.
Conclusion
Between Airbyte and Fivetran, Fivetran stands out for the product’s maturity, reliability, and ease of use.
Airbyte Self-Hosted and Fivetran Hybrid offer similar capabilities surrounding security, data residency, and management. Fivetran however, manages and builds all of the platform’s supported connectors and provides extended support for hybrid deployments so data teams will not have to rely on open source developers or forums for product assistance.
When it comes to the Airbyte Cloud and Fivetran SaaS, however, there are several key considerations. The costs of each platform are largely driven by data volume, but also include post-implementation work, like whether you need to manually resolve schema changes. You may have security requirements that include protecting sensitive data, which requires features like column blocking and hashing. You may require more formalized support with faster turnaround, which may also factor into your costs. You may need deep access to tables and columns. And you may need a highly-automated platform that requires minimal setup, has self-healing, and holistic monitoring capabilities.
In the end, you must choose a solution that best meets your organization’s needs and your use case.
If your organization is growing rapidly and leans more towards “set and forget” than customization and control, you’ll likely lean more toward a fully-managed, product-mature platform. On the other hand, if your organization uses commonly-used data sources and has a tech-savvy staff to build and maintain custom connectors, then you might consider the option with open source and a more developer-focused community.
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