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Census vs Fivetran comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Census
Ranking in Data Integration
42nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fivetran
Ranking in Data Integration
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Data Replication (3rd), Cloud Data Integration (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Census is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fivetran is 1.8%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fivetran1.8%
Census0.5%
Other97.7%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2784462 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Data activation has become faster and business teams access consistent customer insights
Census has been very useful to us as a reverse ETL layer. We have reduced engineering efforts, which has translated into tens of thousands of euros per year in avoided development and maintenance costs, faster and more accurate customer activation, and other improvements that we achieved using Census. Census is faster than our previous approach. Census has enabled faster activation of analytic data into CRM and marketing platforms in our case. Another key benefit is the elimination of manual exports and custom integration scripts, consistent customer data across analytical and operational systems. The best feature that Census offers is that it works directly on top of the data warehouse, preserving a single source of truth. Another valuable feature is that Census provides excellent support for CRM, marketing, and customer-facing platforms. Census creates a single source of truth by making the data warehouse the only place where business logic and data definition live and by ensuring that all downstream operational systems are consumers, not owners of data. All customer attributes, metrics, and segments are defined once, directly in the data warehouse, using SQL and existing data models. Census was useful for us because of the fast time to value, as new syncs can be configured and deployed quickly without custom development. It also ensures that data models are clean and well-defined in the data warehouse after we start using Census. Based on delivery metrics and team feedback, the benefit is that the time to activate new use cases was reduced from weeks to days. Engineering effort dedicated to reverse ETL pipelines decreased by sixty to seventy percent. Maintenance overhead for custom integration was almost completely eliminated, and marketing and growth teams accelerated experimentation cycles significantly. From a cost perspective, reduced engineering effort translated into tens of thousands of euros per year in avoided development and maintenance costs, and faster and more accurate customer activation improved campaign effectiveness and business responsiveness.
Hafiz Usman - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead Data Engineer at Data Pilot
Has accelerated data integration workflows and supports seamless development of custom connectors
I've worked extensively with Fivetran, mainly used for extraction purposes, and I've worked with the transformation element in it as well. Fivetran not only has built-in connectors but also provides SDK connectors, allowing us to develop our own connectors in an easy manner. I don't have to write raw Python scripts or dumping scripts; it offers straightforward examples and guidelines, making it much simpler to develop custom connectors inside Fivetran. We've been able to develop many custom connectors as well, which is unique and beneficial for having everything centralized instead of having those connectors located elsewhere. One of the best features by Fivetran is its clean, simple, and intuitive UI. It includes a transformation section where I can deploy my DBT queries and scripts. It also supplies good tracking capabilities for billing estimates and user permissions, allowing for customization to the desired level. The number of connectors it has remains a standout feature, and within connectors, the options available are very helpful. Although it sometimes appears static due to its built-in nature, it offers good flexibility for data transformation and caching, which I appreciate because it saves us extensive script-writing time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Based on delivery metrics and team feedback, the benefit is that the time to activate new use cases was reduced from weeks to days, engineering effort dedicated to reverse ETL pipelines decreased by sixty to seventy percent, maintenance overhead for custom integration was almost completely eliminated, and marketing and growth teams accelerated experimentation cycles significantly."
"Fivetran can perform data migration incredibly fast, depending on the source and target."
"Fivetran is remarkably easy to use; I haven't encountered any other data integration tool that is as user-friendly."
"The product is very easy to use and very easy to configure."
"It has improved the way our organization functions."
"Fivetran offers native connectivity with Sybase"
"It is easy for users to get accustomed to the tool due to its gentle learning curve and clear error transparency."
"Fivetran's technical support is really good, and if you're on their enterprise plan, they usually respond within an hour and keep you continuously updated on progress."
"The most valuable feature of Fivetran so far is the data replication; the real-time data replication is what I see best in the market where it reduces the overhead of customers needing to maintain the pipeline."
 

Cons

"The areas for improvement are complex transformation logic because it must still be handled upstream in the warehouse, and cost predictability requires attention at high data volumes."
"It should have a few more monitoring functionalities."
"We experience cost issues because Fivetran is charged on a usage basis. When you reach a certain level, the tool should focus on reducing the costs. The solution is expensive when you are moving gigabytes and petabytes of data. It should also focus more on REST APIs and webhooks."
"An in-line data quality checking capability is missing"
"If Fivetran can build in more transformations, that would be really helpful in my opinion."
"Fivetran is very expensive, and its database-driven pricing model is outdated."
"The documentation is decent, but it's hard to find information online about Fivetran. For example, if you try to search for an error code, you won't find much information about it in forums."
"In our case, we ultimately did not end up using Fivetran because we were able to do custom connects at a lower cost compared to Fivetran. From a cost perspective, if the number of connectors is lesser, then Fivetran is not the most cost-efficient option."
"The connections with SAP must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is affordable."
"In the first year, we were given a very good discount. It was approximately 20,000 Euros per year. In the third year, we purchased credit for two years and the price was 33,000 Euros per year."
"I rate the pricing a six out of ten."
"The licensing costs are extremely high for the usage of somebody who has one GB or two GB of usage per day for real-time traffic. There are many other players in the market which are similarly priced or competitively priced. On average per month, it used to come around 12,000-15,000 USD, which is very high."
"When you have a lot of workflows and complex use cases, pricing goes down as you use it more."
"I would say they're a little bit on the expensive side, and their contract process is not particularly good, but there is a lot of potential flexibility."
"I've heard that the license for HVR is a bit costly compared to its competitors, but since it's reliable and efficient, I think the customer shouldn't be bothered about the cost."
"The product is reasonably expensive"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Census?
Census has been performing very well overall. One area that may need improvement is that sometimes a custom setup is very difficult to configure. This was the case with our Intercom segment setup. ...
What is your primary use case for Census?
Census is a versatile data synchronizing solution that solves a wide range of data management problems for our business. With Census, we were able to reduce the sync time taken to transfer data fro...
What advice do you have for others considering Census?
I would rate Census an eight out of ten according to my experience. I feel it is not quite a ten because sometimes a custom setup is very difficult to configure. This was the case with our Intercom...
What's the deal with the HVR software acquisition?
As a user of HVR Software I followed this deal closely. Fivetran is apparently trying to establish more in its sector and by buying an already established data replication software, they become som...
Does HVR Software provide reliable insights?
I honestly can't think of another data replication software that can give you better statistics and insight than HVR Software. There's the feature for topology and statistics and both of them can ...
How much traffic can HVR Software handle?
As someone who works at a company where a high volume of information is replicated and has tried several data replication softwares, I can tell you that you're looking at the right one. HVR Softwar...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Autodesk, Condé Nast, JetBlue, Morgan Stanley, OpenAI, LVMH, Pfizer, Verizon, SpotifyNational Australia Bank, Saks, Cemex, Okta, Dropbox, Pitney Bowes, World Fuel Services,Lufthansa, AutoZone, ASICS, ASOS, Coupa, Databricks, Hermes, New Relic, Intercom,Canva, Honeywell, Square, DocuSign, Nandos, Oldcastle Infrastructure
Find out what your peers are saying about Informatica, Microsoft, Palantir and others in Data Integration. Updated: June 2026.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.