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Confluent 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

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (4th)
Fivetran
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (12th), Data Replication (3rd), Cloud Data Integration (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
Mediha Šiljić - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in connectors offer extensive data source integration and time savings
Fivetran could improve by adapting more for technical users and by providing more options for such users. There should be more adaptability in terms of new features. If a specific feature is required, it should be integrated promptly. Improvement in existing connectors with new features is desirable. Enhancements around customer-focused product adaptation are also suggested.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and tools."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"We ensure seamless management of Kafka through Confluent, allowing all of our Kafka activities to be handled by a third party."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"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."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"The portal is very intuitive and easy to use."
"SysTrack load is the best feature."
"You can manage all of your connectors individually, which gives you a very good ability to trace which one of your ETL processes is running and when."
"Fivetran can perform data migration incredibly fast, depending on the source and target."
"Its arrays are powerful enough to handle migrations even when the replication is happening in the background, without causing any trouble with the ongoing traffic."
"It is not like a traditional ETL, but it gives quite a lot of flexibility."
"Fivetran is remarkably easy to use; I haven't encountered any other data integration tool that is as user-friendly."
"It is easy for users to get accustomed to the tool due to its gentle learning curve and clear error transparency."
 

Cons

"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"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."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"The customization could improve because Fivetran gives more thought to people who don't want to manage analytics workflows rather than engineers who want to be able to customize pipelines more thoroughly."
"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."
"There is not a lot of options to customize the pipeline, and the cost is high."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"It should have a few more monitoring functionalities."
"I would like Fivetran to implement additional resource monitoring and restriction policies."
"This solution needs to improve its real-time data and transformation availability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is highly priced."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"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."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"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."
"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 can't give exact amounts because that's based on usage, but it's more expensive than some of its competitors."
"I don't have the exact information, but I know it is high, and it is on a yearly basis. There is no additional cost for what we're doing. We're always open to doing things cheaper, so we might potentially implement a different solution."
"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."
"When you have a lot of workflows and complex use cases, pricing goes down as you use it more."
"The product is reasonably expensive"
"Fivetran is very expensive, and its database-driven pricing model is outdated."
"The solution is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
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?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
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

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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 Confluent vs. Fivetran and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,155 professionals have used our research since 2012.