1v1 Pricing Showdown
Airbyte vs Fivetran
Side-by-side pricing breakdown for ETL & Data Integration decision-makers
Prices in USD, verified from the United States. Regional pricing may vary.
When choosing between Airbyte and Fivetran for your etl & data integration stack, the right answer depends on three things: your budget, the specific features you actually use day-to-day, and your tolerance for renewal-price increases. Below we lay out the prices each vendor advertises today (verified against their live pricing pages), the plan limits that decide whether they'll fit your team, and the features that differ between them.
Airbyte starts at $10/mo; Fivetran starts at custom pricing. The cheaper headline price isn't always the cheaper total cost — renewal pricing, per-user fees, and overage charges can shift the math. Use the plan-by-plan tables below to model your actual spend.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| open source foundation | Apache 2.0 license — MIT-like permissiveness | — |
| 600 plus connectors | Second most in category after Fivetran | — |
| self hosted free | Deploy on your own infrastructure | — |
| capacity based pricing pro | Data Workers = dedicated compute units — eliminates volume-based charges | — |
| agent engine | AI agents for pipeline automation | — |
| rbac | Pro+ | Standard+ |
| row filtering | Pro+ | — |
| encryption | Pro+ | — |
| sso saml | Enterprise Flex | — |
| white glove onboarding | Enterprise Flex ($10,000 one-time) | — |
| dedicated engineer | Enterprise Flex | — |
| community connectors | Variable quality — officially-maintained production-ready | — |
| dbt integration | All plans | — |
| connector builder | Build custom connectors without code | — |
| 700 plus connectors | — | Most in category — category-leading breadth |
| managed connectors | — | All maintained by Fivetran with 99.9% uptime SLA |
| mar pricing | — | Monthly Active Rows — rows modified in month, not total rows |
| volume discounts auto | — | Volume discounts apply automatically at scale |
| sync frequency | — | 15-minute Standard / 1-minute Enterprise |
| dbt core integration | — | All paid plans |
| schema migrations automatic | — | Handles source schema changes |
| audience hub | — | Enterprise+ |
| vpn tunnels | — | Enterprise+ |
| customer managed keys | — | Business Critical only |
| pci dss level 1 | — | Business Critical only |
| private networking | — | Business Critical only |
| census acquisition oct 2025 | — | Reverse ETL now bundled |
Affiliate links — you pay the same price
Dive Deeper
About the etl & data integration category
ETL/ELT data integration tools in 2026 have three competing pricing models. 'Row-volume pricing' (Fivetran MAR / Monthly Active Rows, Stitch row tier, Hevo events): pay per row moved — predictable but scales with data volume. 'Credit/capacity-based' (Airbyte credits, Matillion Task Hours): pay for compute time — data-agnostic, favors bursty workloads. 'Open source with cloud upgrade' (Airbyte OSS free, Matillion Developer tier): self-host free with managed cloud option. Fivetran remains the category incumbent and usability leader (700+ connectors, 15-min sync frequency, dbt integration). Airbyte's open-source foundation with 600+ connectors has become the 'Fivetran alternative' for teams wanting cost control + flexibility. Stitch (owned by Talend, which was acquired by Qlik in 2023) targets mid-market with row-tier pricing. Hevo Data competes on SMB accessibility with transparent per-event pricing. Matillion focuses on transformation-first ETL with credit-based consumption. Fivetran acquired Census in October 2025 — now bundles ingestion + transformation + reverse ETL. The 2024-2026 trend: AI agents for pipeline creation (Fivetran AI, Airbyte Agent Engine) became standard; dbt integration is table stakes; CDC (Change Data Capture) replaced batch sync for most production workloads. Row volume vs compute time pricing philosophies drive buying decisions at SMB ($100-1,000/month) and enterprise ($5,000-50,000+/month) tiers.
How to choose between etl & data integration options
First: SMB, mid-market, or enterprise? SMB under 10M rows/month: Fivetran Free (500K MAR) or Hevo Free (1M events) for evaluation; Hevo Starter ($239-299/month) or Stitch Standard ($100/month for 5M rows) for production. Mid-market 10-100M rows/month: Fivetran Standard with volume discounts, Hevo Professional ($679-849/month), Stitch Advanced ($1,500/month for 100M rows). Enterprise 100M-1B+ rows/month: Fivetran Enterprise, Stitch Premium ($3,000/month for 1B rows), Matillion Enterprise custom. Second: open-source optionality matters? Airbyte OSS (self-hosted free with 600+ connectors) provides genuine escape hatch — deploy on your own infrastructure. Other vendors are managed-only. Third: transformation-heavy workloads? Matillion focuses on transformation (SQL + Python + low-code canvas) rather than pure ingestion — for teams doing complex warehouse transformations (vs dbt-first modeling), Matillion's native transformation runtime is compelling. Fourth: row-volume predictable vs compute-time capacity? Row-volume (Fivetran, Stitch, Hevo) is predictable for steady-state workloads but scales with data growth. Compute-time (Airbyte Pro, Matillion credits) favors bursty workloads where data volume varies widely. Fifth: real-time CDC requirements? Fivetran Enterprise (1-minute sync), Hevo Business Critical (streaming pipelines), Stitch Premium (low-latency) target real-time use cases. Sixth: integration with other platform? Fivetran (acquired Census Oct 2025) bundles ingestion + reverse ETL. Matillion tight Snowflake + Databricks + Redshift integration. Seventh: compliance? HIPAA BAA signing available on Stitch Advanced+, Hevo Business Critical, Fivetran Business Critical (PCI DSS Level 1 + CMK), Airbyte Enterprise Flex with SSO/SAML. Eighth: sync frequency needs? 15 minutes (Fivetran Standard) is adequate for most analytics; 1-minute (Fivetran Enterprise) for near-real-time; seconds (CDC streaming on Hevo/Stitch Premium) for operational data replication.
Building Your Business Stack?
Decision-makers comparing tools often need more than one category. Here are related comparisons:
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does Airbyte or Fivetran offer a free plan?
- Airbyte and Fivetran both offer a free plan.
- Which is better, Airbyte or Fivetran?
- Fivetran scores 9.3/10 compared to Airbyte's 9/10 in our analysis. Fivetran ranks higher on features and value, but Airbyte may suit specific use cases — see the feature comparison above.
- Are there other etl & data integration alternatives besides Airbyte and Fivetran?
- Yes. Our [ETL & Data Integration pricing comparison](/pricing/etl/) page covers all major providers with daily-verified prices. You can also see the [cheapest etl & data integration](/pricing/etl/cheapest/) for budget-focused options.