Fivetran vs Talend

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Our analysts compared Fivetran vs Talend based on data from our 400+ point analysis of ETL Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Fivetran is a cloud-native data extraction tool that simplifies and streamlines the data analysis process with a zero-maintenance pipeline that ensures expedient, transparent delivery of data from source to warehouse. Built to empower analysts, it allows users to accelerate analytics and achieve faster time-to-insights without the need for complex engineering, promoting more efficient data-driven decision-making for users of all technical skill levels.

Suitable for small to large companies, it is a public-cloud hosted SaaS available through annual subscriptions, paid via invoice. Pricing is volume based with three tiers of plans, in ascending order of offerings and cost: Starter, Standard and Enterprise.

Pros
  • Easy to use interface
  • Connects to many data sources
  • Fast and reliable data pipelines
  • Centralized data management
  • Scalable for large data volumes
Cons
  • Limited customizability
  • Can be expensive for complex needs
  • Not ideal for real-time data
  • Limited support for data transformations
  • Learning curve for advanced features
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Talend is an open-source data integration and management platform that enables big data ingestion, transformation and mapping at the enterprise level. The vendor provides cross-network connectivity, data quality and master data management in a single, unified hub – the Data Fabric. Based on industry standards like Eclipse, Java and SQL, it helps businesses create reusable pipelines – build once and use anywhere, with no proprietary lock-in.

The open-source version is free, with the cloud data integration module available for a monthly and annual fee. The price of Data Fabric is available on request.

Pros
  • Open source & affordable
  • Visual drag-and-drop UI
  • Wide range of connectors
  • Scalable & cloud-ready
  • Active community & support
Cons
  • Steeper learning curve
  • Limited native profiling
  • Customization can be complex
  • Debugging can be challenging
  • Enterprise features require paid editions
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$55 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$4,800 Annually
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Insights

  • Five-Minute Setup: The platform boasts a zero-maintenance configuration process that can have users up and running in 10 clicks.
  • Data Simplified: Users can simplify their data stack with streamlined data extraction and preparation processes, allowing for more accurate and efficient access to analytics.
  • Optimized Loading: Automatic updates reduce data entry tasks and ensure real-time accuracy across storage facilities. The platform also reduces workloads on cloud data warehouses by putting the brunt of demand on their servers instead of the warehouses’. 
  • Centralize Data: The solution helps users to extract data from disparate sources and load it into their data warehouse to create a single, cohesive source of truth in the cloud.
  • Flexibility: Standing apart from many traditional data tools, Fivetran utilizes ELT (extract, load, transform) over ETL (extract, transform and load). By flipping the last two steps of the process and postponing data transformation, it ensures that stored data won’t be compromised by transformations, allowing users to perform analysis more deliberately and securely.
  • Smooth Integrations: Integration with other systems is intuitive and smooth with this platform. Its seamless data sync allows users to draw data from their CRM, ERP or other business solutions as well as a range of cloud data sources, allowing for real-time monitoring.
  • Data Security: The system has advanced security features and is compliant with PCI, HIPAA, GDPR and SOC 2 standards. It also encrypts data in motion and at rest, purging data after every sync. 
  • Built to Scale: The platform helps users navigate a world of exponential data growth, with instantly scalable cloud resources, optimized processes and pricing plans that keep up with companies as they grow. 
  • Free Trial: Interested buyers can receive a free 14-day trial of the platform to test connectors and features by signing up on the vendor’s website. Users can add up to two sources and set up an unlimited number of connectors for those sources, pointing to one destination. Users interested in adding more sources or destinations can contact the Fivetran sales team for more information.
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  • Maximize ROI: Save money and time – build data pipelines faster. Lower operational costs with a zero-footprint solution. Build long-term customer associations by making reliable, accurate data available. Reduce risk and ensure regulatory compliance. Get a fast return on investment with its usage-based subscription model. 
  • Make Business Decisions Quicker: Live preview business data and diagnose issues instantly. Refer to dataset documentation to understand how datasets relate and change through the data flow and how variables used in analysis are defined. Transform data while maintaining optimum quality by applying built-in functions across batch and streaming pipelines. 
  • Integrate Big Data: Connect to a variety of data sources with more than 800 data connectors, with native support for Hadoop, MapReduce and NoSQL. Delivers clean, consistent assets at a big data scale. 
  • Deploy Anywhere: Get data from behind firewalls, data centers or in secure cloud environments. Manage data in the public cloud, with self-managed private clouds and on-premise platforms, or go hybrid. 
  • Scale As The Business Grows: Scales as more complex, larger data sets are generated to provide advanced analytics. Works with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Snowflake and Databricks. 
  • Maintain Data Quality: Identify, highlight and fix issues as data moves across systems. Ensure data quality at every stage of the data pipeline with embedded checks. Preempt inconsistencies before they can impact crucial decisions. 
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  • Data Connectivity: The solution has data connectors for 100 sources, with the option for users to create their own data connector to APIs not yet natively supported. It directly pulls information from cloud applications. Users can also upload or email files into a cloud storage service and have that data loaded into their warehouse. The system reflects changes made to live files such as Google Sheets.
  • Extract Data: The solution connects natively to over 100 SaaS sources, automatically extracting information from those sources after an admin has granted the tool access through OAuth. The system normalizes, cleanses and standardizes data before loading.
  • Data Sync: Upon connection, the system performs a historical sync. From there, instead of arduously reloading full data dumps from APIs and databases, the solution optimizes loadings by incrementally updating data sources in batches, with data load time configurable as frequently as five minutes and as infrequent as every 24 hours.
  • Load into Cloud Data Warehouses: Fivetran supports modem cloud warehouses like BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure and Redshift.
  • Transform Data: The platform preps data, normalizing schemas from APIs, so that it can be analyzed instantly. Transformations always happen in the warehouse so that the raw data is always available alongside the transformed data; data will never be lost and the transformations can be edited and run again on the raw data.
  • Alerts: The system notifies users if there are delays or issues in any step of the process.
  • Dashboards: Users interact with the platform via dashboards that display information about ELT processes in a visual, easy-to-digest format.
  • System Logs: The solution maintains transparency with granular system logs of every sync that users can cross-reference in their own logging system.
  • Metadata Management: A suite of policies and procedures allows users to manage the data which describes other data such as file size, date of data creation, tags, titles, authors, etc.
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  • Pipeline Designer: Pull in data to create dashboards that power business insights. Build reusable pipelines to integrate data from any source, then transform it to upload to data warehouses. 
    • DIY Data Workflows: Design and preview data workflows directly in the web browser without IT help. Run pipelines directly where the data lives, with support for disparate filesystems, business apps, databases, data warehouses and messaging services. Automate data stewardship, preparation and cataloging into data pipelines. 
  • Data Inventory: Prepare, consume and share data from a single, centralized hub. Make informed decisions by putting unique, accurate data at the center of business. 
    • View data trustworthiness at a glance with the Trust Score. Aggregates multiple metrics into a single, easy-to-understand score, scaling from 0 to 5. 
    • Flags data silos across sources and resolves the gap with reusable and shareable data assets. 
    • Make data work for you by sharing assets between the data preparation and designer modules. 
  • Talend Open Studio: Handles big data by leveraging Hadoop and its databases, or HBase, HCatalog, HDFS and Hive. Connects to Oracle, Teradata, Microsoft SQL Server, Marketo, Salesforce, Netsuite, SAP, Sugar CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, SMTP, FTP/SFTP, LDAP and more. Provides an Eclipse-based integrated environment (IDE) for system development. 
  • Talend Sandbox: The vendor provides a sandbox environment for data warehouse optimization, clickstream analytics, social media sentiment analysis and Apache weblog analytics. 
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Product Ranking

#7

among all
ETL Tools

#10

among all
ETL Tools

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Platform Capabilities
Platform Security
Metadata Management
Data Transformation
Data Sources and Targets Connectivity
Data Delivery
Data Quality
Data Transformation
Metadata Management
Performance and Scalability

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Fivetran
Talend
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Data Delivery Data Quality Data Sources And Targets Connectivity Data Transformation Metadata Management Platform Capabilities Workflow Management 86 75 93 94 96 100 81 100 100 92 100 100 100 89 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 28 reviews
Great User Sentiment 270 reviews
92%
of users recommend this product

Fivetran has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 28 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

82%
of users recommend this product

Talend has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 82% when considering 270 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.64 (14)
4.19 (22)
4.6 (14)
4.0 (52)
n/a
4.1 (145)
n/a
4.1 (51)

Awards

Fivetran stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Talend and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Data Transformation.

Data Transformation Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Effortless Data Integration: Connects to hundreds of data sources with pre-built connectors and minimal setup.
Automated Data Pipelines: Schedules and runs data transfers reliably, freeing up time for analysis.
Centralized Data Management: Provides a single source of truth for all your data, simplifying reporting and decision-making.
Scalable for Growth: Handles large data volumes with ease, adapting to your evolving needs.
Improved Data Visibility: Makes data readily available for everyone in your organization, fostering data-driven decision-making.
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Simplified Lineage Tracking: Visually map data flows and transformations for enhanced auditability and compliance, ensuring your data journey is clear and transparent.
Centralized Policy Management: Define and enforce data quality, access, and security rules across the organization, fostering a consistent and controlled data environment.
Automated Data Catalog: Discover, document, and govern all data assets for improved data visibility and utilization, empowering your teams to find and leverage the right data.
Streamlined Data Masking & Anonymization: Protect sensitive data during development and testing while preserving data utility, safeguarding privacy and complying with regulations.
Scalable & Collaborative:** Manage data governance across diverse data sources and teams with ease, adapting to your evolving data landscape and fostering collaboration.
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Limited Customizability: Relies on pre-built connectors, making complex data pipelines or transformations challenging.
Costly for Advanced Needs: Pricing scales with data volume and complexity, becoming expensive for intricate ETL processes.
Batch-Oriented Transfers: Focuses on scheduled data refreshes, not ideal for real-time needs or low-latency pipelines.
Basic Data Transformations: Offers limited built-in transformations, requiring additional tools for complex data manipulation.
Advanced Feature Learning Curve: Mastering custom connectors, scripting, or other advanced features requires technical expertise.
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Limited Native Profiling: Lacks built-in tools for advanced data profiling and quality monitoring, requiring additional integrations or third-party tools, increasing complexity and potentially costs.
Steep Learning Curve: Complex UI and configuration can be challenging for beginners, especially non-technical users, requiring significant training and investment in onboarding and ongoing support.
Customization Challenges: Extensive customization options, while offering flexibility, can lead to complexity and maintenance overhead, particularly for large deployments or intricate data governance requirements.
Limited Community Support: While the Talend community is active, it may not be as extensive as other data governance solutions, potentially impacting troubleshooting and knowledge sharing, especially for niche issues or advanced configurations.
Enterprise Features in Paid Editions: Key data governance features like advanced lineage tracking, data masking, and data quality monitoring often require purchasing higher-tiered paid editions, increasing costs and potentially limiting accessibility for organizations with budget constraints.
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Users praise Fivetran for its ease of use and effortless data integration. "Setting up connectors is straightforward," one reviewer comments, "like plugging in appliances." This plug-and-play simplicity sets it apart from competitors like Stitch, often lauded for its flexibility but criticized for a steeper learning curve. However, Fivetran's strength in pre-built connectors comes at a cost: limited customizability. While users love its "seamless data movement," another user points out it's "not ideal for complex transformations," requiring additional tools that negate its initial ease. This lack of advanced ETL capabilities puts it behind platforms like Informatica PowerCenter, but at a fraction of the cost. Ultimately, Fivetran shines for its user-friendly approach and reliable data pipelines, perfect for businesses prioritizing simplicity and scalability. But for complex data manipulation or real-time needs, users might find themselves yearning for the power and flexibility of other ETL solutions.

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Users praise Talend's visual drag-and-drop builder as a major draw, especially when compared to code-heavy platforms like Informatica. "Talend's UI feels much more intuitive and beginner-friendly," one reviewer shared, making it easier to onboard non-technical colleagues. However, its steeper learning curve compared to simpler tools like Snaplogic was also noted, demanding more training and initial investment.Talend's open-source roots and wide range of connectors were lauded, especially for cost-conscious businesses. One user compared it to IBM DataStage, noting "Talend's open-source version offers surprisingly robust functionality, making it a viable alternative for smaller budgets." However, limited native profiling compared to powerful tools like Alteryx was mentioned as a drawback, forcing integration with separate solutions and potentially raising costs.Users appreciated Talend's scalability and cloud-readiness, particularly when contrasted with legacy ETL offerings. "Talend scales seamlessly as our data needs grow," said one reviewer, making it a future-proof investment. However, some found enterprise features locked behind paid editions, like advanced lineage tracking and data quality monitoring, a disadvantage compared to competitors like Boomi that offer these capabilities across the board.Overall, Talend's balance of affordability, user-friendliness, and scalability shines through in user reviews. While it may require deeper initial investment in training and lack certain advanced features out-of-the-box, its flexibility and adaptability make it a strong contender for businesses navigating the evolving data landscape. As one user summed it up, "Talend might not be perfect, but it's a powerful tool that grows with you, and that's what matters most."

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Screenshots

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