Airbyte Cloud vs Confluent comparison

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Airbyte Cloud

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Airbyte Cloud and Confluent based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Airbyte Cloud

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (20th), Cloud Data Integration (15th)

Confluent

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (7th)

Featured Reviews

ParthasarathyT

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Publicis Sapient

Centralized data pipelines have reduced costs and now power faster analytics and reporting

The best features Airbyte Cloud offers include the centralization of data for analytics by combining data from SaaS tools, databases, and APIs into one place. It enables production models, BI reporting, and ML use cases. Airbyte Cloud has a huge connector ecosystem with over 600 connectors across SaaS tools, databases, apps, and platforms that can be integrated. Faster integration requires less engineering work. Automation and reliability are significant features, allowing me to schedule syncs daily with auto-retry, logging, and alerting capabilities. Incremental updates such as CDC for efficiency are available. Airbyte Cloud is a managed cloud solution with no infrastructure worries, as everything is managed. It is customizable, and the significant difference is that we have full control. It is also more cost-effective than competitors.Airbyte Cloud has positively impacted my organization by reducing the manpower required for managing the underlying resources of a data sync. It directly performs the job that a database engineer would do by managing a huge connector ecosystem with over 600 connectors across SaaS tools and databases, enabling faster integration. Whenever new data arrives, it automatically syncs to the destination source without requiring any engineer to manually copy or replicate the data. This approach helps our organization significantly.

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PavanManepalli

AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo

Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing

I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Since using Airbyte Cloud, we save approximately seventy to seventy-five percent of the time our data team was spending on manual data preparation."

"Airbyte Cloud is a strong tool for extracting and loading data from various sources to a data warehouse, which I am eager to leverage since I do not have to build my own custom extractors."

"Airbyte Cloud has positively impacted my organization by reducing the manpower required for managing the underlying resources of a data sync."

"One significant benefit for us is reducing the amount of custom pipeline maintenance."

"Airbyte Cloud has positively impacted our organization because we were looking for multiple products and ended up choosing Airbyte because it is easy to use and set up."

"Airbyte Cloud has positively impacted my organization as it was a fairly easy and low-cost way of integrating those external data sources with our overall data ecosystem."

"I definitely recommend and use this product because it has vast security capabilities."

"Airbyte Cloud has positively impacted our organization by being very helpful and speeding up our work environment."

More Airbyte Cloud pros

"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."

"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."

"The most valuable feature that we are using is the data replication between the data centers allowing us to configure a disaster recovery or software. However, is it's not mandatory to use and because most of the features that we use are from Apache Kafka, such as end-to-end encryption. Internally, we can develop our own kind of product or service from Apache Kafka."

"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."

"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."

"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."

"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."

"To date, we have seen improvements in performance and scalability, so we recommend this solution."

More Confluent pros

Cons

"I think Airbyte Cloud can be improved by adding more connectors and more customizable connectors."

"My suggestion for improvement would mainly be around areas that could be enhanced: error debugging depth in the UI, more granular visibility into why a sync failed, and better handling or guidance around schema changes when they happen frequently in source systems."

"There are improvements that can be done to move it on a higher scale and maybe get used across the industry, which it lacks right now, and even the kind of support; otherwise, it is a good tool."

"Airbyte Cloud can be improved because it looks good so far, but based on the AI coming, they have to catch up with AI agents."

"I think Airbyte Cloud can be improved in terms of its subscription rigidity, particularly for small business owners who want a managed platform connecting their data sources with DBT runs while keeping costs to a bare minimum."

"I give it an eight because of error messages. If they solve some error messages, that would help significantly."

"Airbyte Cloud could be improved because the documentation and setup manual are quite limited."

"One challenge I have faced recently in Airbyte Cloud is occasional connector sync failure that requires troubleshooting through logs."

"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."

"It could have more themes. The themes in the version I'm using are very limited; they offer two to three themes."

"Confluent has fallen behind in being the tool of the industry. It's taking second place to things such as Word and SharePoint and other office tools that are more dynamic and flexible than Confluent."

"Confluent's price needs improvement."

"The beginner who doesn't know how to work on HTML will struggle as when you create spaces in the Confluent, if you want to have some meeting notes or anything else, you need to know HTML and which HTML tags to include."

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."

"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."

"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."

More Confluent cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."

"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."

"Confluent is highly priced."

"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."

"The solution is cheaper than other products."

"You have to pay additional for one or two features."

"It comes with a high cost."

More Confluent pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

22%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	17

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Airbyte Cloud?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I did not deal with the billing side of Airbyte Cloud, but I think the overall cost was relatively low, so I don't think we had any iss...

What needs improvement with Airbyte Cloud?

The areas for improvement could be more detailed error logs. The error logs that are coming are not very comprehensive, but they could provide more detailed error messages. Additionally, an enhance...

What is your primary use case for Airbyte Cloud?

I use Airbyte Cloud primarily for data integration and ETL workflows between different systems and destination databases. My setup is straightforward with Airbyte Cloud, and I use it for creating n...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?

They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.

What needs improvement with Confluent?

What is your primary use case for Confluent?

The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...

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Product Reports

Airbyte Cloud

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Overview

Airbyte Cloud is a modern data integration platform that facilitates seamless data movement across applications and warehouses with user-friendly features and robust connectors.

Airbyte Cloud offers an adaptable approach to data integration, designed to handle large-scale data synchronization efficiently. It supports various environments, providing reliable and fast data transfer. Users benefit from its open-source foundation, offering flexibility and innovation. Its architecture allows developers to create custom connectors, making it highly customizable to meet specific data movement needs.

What are the crucial features of Airbyte Cloud?

Open-Source Flexibility: Leverage an open-source model for customizable solutions
Pre-built Connectors: Access a wide range of connectors for seamless data integration
Custom Connector Creation: Design and implement connectors tailored to unique data flow requirements
Advanced Scheduling: Automate data transfers with scheduled synchronization
Error Monitoring: Effective tracking and error logging for uninterrupted workflows

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Reduced Integration Costs: Optimize expenses with efficient data synchronization processes
Improved Data Accuracy: Enhance data reliability through effective integration
Scalability: Easily adapt to increasing data volumes with scalable infrastructure
Faster Deployment: Speed up implementation timelines with pre-built features

Airbyte Cloud is utilized in sectors such as e-commerce, where quick access to real-time data is essential for inventory management, and in financial services, enabling seamless transactions and accurate data analytics. Its flexibility supports environments demanding high agility, driving transformation with minimal disruptions.

Airbyte

Confluent offers scalable, open-source flexibility and seamless data replication, supported by strong cloud integration. Key features like Kafka Connect and real-time processing make it valuable for data streaming projects while ensuring high availability with a Multi-Region Cluster.

Confluent is a robust data streaming platform that enables efficient management and integration of real-time data pipelines. Its message-driven architecture and fault tolerance provide reliability, while a user-friendly dashboard and connectors support diverse data sources. Cloud integration reduces costs, and extensive documentation, plugins, and monitoring capabilities enhance collaboration and revision management. Despite some areas needing improvement, including security in the SaaS version and integration flexibility, Confluent remains a staple in industries requiring vast data processing and task automation.

What are Confluent's key features?

Scalability: Handles large volumes of data, ensuring continuous performance.
Kafka Connect: Enables seamless data integration across multiple systems.
Real-time Processing: Facilitates instant data insights for rapid decision-making.
Multi-Region Cluster: Maintains data availability across different geographical locations.
Cloud Integration: Reduces operational costs and enhances deployment flexibility.
User Dashboard: Simplifies management with an intuitive interface.

What benefits and ROI should users consider in reviews?

Cost-Efficiency: Improved processes reduce operational expenses.
Data Reliability: Ensures consistent and accurate data handling.
Increased Collaboration: Boosts team efficiency with comprehensive documentation and management tools.
Scalability: Supports business growth without compromising performance.
Integration Flexibility: Seamlessly connects with diverse data sources and systems.

Confluent is commonly implemented in finance, insurance, and software industries for applications like fraud detection, ETL tasks, and enterprise communication. It supports real-time data processing, project management, and task automation, often integrating with project management tools like Jira, providing valuable solutions for business processes.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost

Cloud Data Integration