StreamSets vs dbt comparison

dbt Labs and IBM are both solutions in the Data Integration category. dbt Labs is ranked #33 with an average rating of 7.5, while IBM is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.0. dbt Labs holds a 2.1% mindshare in DI, compared to IBM’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of dbt Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

dbt

Read 2 dbt reviews

960 Views
950 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 21 StreamSets reviews

2,763 Views
1,989 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

dbt

StreamSets

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

StreamSets and dbt are competing products in the data integration and transformation space. StreamSets has an advantage in customer service and pricing, while dbt holds the upper hand in its feature set, promising better long-term value.

Features: StreamSets offers robust data integration with real-time data processing, supports on-premise and cloud environments, and facilitates broad data handling. Dbt focuses on transformation within the warehouse, provides modular SQL development, version control, and specializes in SQL-based transformations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: StreamSets allows for seamless integration with existing systems, with flexible deployment options across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid models. Their customer service is responsive and helpful. Dbt primarily focuses on cloud-based deployment, boasts strong documentation for ease of use, but may require more initial setup. Their SQL-only operations simplify deployment for some, though StreamSets offers greater deployment flexibility and support.

Pricing and ROI: StreamSets provides competitive pricing with various subscription models, offering lower initial costs and quicker ROI. Dbt may be more expensive at the outset; however, its advanced transformation capabilities are seen as a worthwhile investment for optimizing warehouse data, with a promise of long-term value. StreamSets has an advantage in initial cost-effectiveness, while dbt justifies higher costs with its comprehensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed StreamSets vs. dbt Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets vs. dbt

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

dbt

Ranking in Data Integration

33rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

StreamSets

Ranking in Data Integration

22nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 2.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StreamSets is 1.6%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Ninad Magdum

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Happiest Minds Technologies

Developer-friendly and easy to use, but doesn't have many optimization options

We also use stored procedures and Talend. They are not replaced by dbt completely. We use dbt only for the transformation process. My recommendations would depend on an organization’s requirements and problems. I will recommend the tool to others. The product is developer-friendly. However, it is still dependent on the data warehouse for big data and optimization. It's just a SQL transformation tool. It doesn't have a lot of optimization options like Spark. It's a good tool for Snowflake. If it were only for Snowflake, I would have rated it an eight out of ten. However, there are other data platforms. Overall, I rate the tool a six and a half out of ten.

Read full review

Ved Prakash Yadav

Senior Data Platform Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Useful for data transformation and helps with column encryption

We use various tools and alerting systems to notify us of pipeline errors or failures. StreamSets supports data governance and compliance by allowing us to encrypt incoming data based on specified rules. We can easily encrypt columns by providing the column name and hash key. If you're considering using StreamSets for the first time, I would advise first understanding why you want to use it and how it will benefit you. If you're dealing with change tracking or handling large amounts of data, it could be cost-effective compared to services like Amazon. It's easy to schedule and manage tasks with the tool, and you can enhance your skills as an ETL developer. You can easily migrate traditional pipelines built on platforms like Informatica or Talend to StreamSets. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is developer-friendly."

"In StreamSets, everything is in one place."

"One of the things I like is the data pipelines. They have a very good design. Implementing pipelines is very straightforward. It doesn't require any technical skill."

"The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customize it to do what you need. Many other tools have started to use features similar to those introduced by StreamSets, like automated workflows that are easy to set up."

"The ability to have a good bifurcation rate and fewer mistakes is valuable."

"Also, the intuitive canvas for designing all the streams in the pipeline, along with the simplicity of the entire product are very big pluses for me. The software is very simple and straightforward. That is something that is needed right now."

"For me, the most valuable features in StreamSets have to be the Data Collector and Control Hub, but especially the Data Collector. That feature is very elegant and seamlessly works with numerous source systems."

"StreamSets is the leader in the market."

"The ETL capabilities are very useful for us. We extract and transform data from multiple data sources, into a single, consistent data store, and then we put it in our systems. We typically use it to connect our Apache Kafka with data lakes. That process is smooth and saves us a lot of time in our production systems."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."

"If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data."

"StreamSets should provide a mechanism to be able to perform data quality assessment when the data is being moved from one source to the target."

"One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infrastructure."

"They need to improve their customer care services. Sometimes it has taken more than 48 hours to resolve an issue. That should be reduced. They are aware of small or generic issues, but not the more technical or deep issues. For those, they require some time, generally 48 to 72 hours to respond. That should be improved."

"The monitoring visualization is not that user-friendly. It should include other features to visualize things, like how many records were streamed from a source to a destination on a particular date."

"StreamSet works great for batch processing but we are looking for something that is more real-time. We need latency in numbers below milliseconds."

"There aren't enough hands-on labs, and debugging is also an issue because it takes a lot of time. Logs are not that clear when you are debugging, and you can only select a single source for a pipeline."

"Sometimes, it is not clear at first how to set up nodes. A site with an explanation of how each node works would be very helpful."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."

"The pricing is too fixed. It should be based on how much data you need to process. Some businesses are not so big that they process a lot of data."

"We are running the community version right now, which can be used free of charge."

"I believe the pricing is not equitable."

"The pricing is affordable for any business."

"The overall cost is very flexible so it is not a burden for our organization... However, the cost should be improved. For small and mid-size organizations it might be a challenge."

"There are different versions of the product. One is the corporate license version, and the other one is the open-source or free version. I have been using the corporate license version, but they have recently launched a new open-source version so that anybody can create an account and use it. The licensing cost varies from customer to customer. I don't have a lot of input on that. It is taken care of by PMO, and they seem fine with its pricing model. It is being used enterprise-wide. They seem to have got a good deal for StreamSets."

"StreamSets Data Collector is open source. One can utilize the StreamSets Data Collector, but the Control Hub is the main repository where all the jobs are present. Everything happens in Control Hub."

"It has a CPU core-based licensing, which works for us and is quite good."

More StreamSets pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Insurance Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for dbt?

It is cheap because dbt is open source. If you compare the pay-per-service of Dbt with the open source option you can manage. We are managing the solution, when we were acquiring service from them....

See all answers

What needs improvement with dbt?

SQL statements that beyond DML, are not possible. Currently, they are not possible in Dbt. Having more features in SQL statements will support us. Another issue is the terms of data ingestion becau...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for dbt?

We use the solution to deal with data transformations inside different organizations.

See all answers

What do you like most about StreamSets?

The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StreamSets?

One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StreamSets?

We are using StreamSets for batch loading.

See all answers

Comparisons

SSIS vs dbt

Compared 26% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs dbt

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs dbt

Compared 9% of the time

Tobiko vs dbt

Compared 8% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs dbt

Compared 7% of the time

More dbt Competitors

Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets

Compared 13% of the time

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs StreamSets

Compared 12% of the time

webMethods.io vs StreamSets

Compared 9% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs StreamSets

Compared 7% of the time

Fivetran vs StreamSets

Compared 6% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Data Integration

August 2025

Download dbt product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

July 2025

Download StreamSets product report

Overview

dbt is a transformational tool that empowers data teams to quickly build trusted data models, providing a shared language for analysts and engineering teams. Its flexibility and robust feature set make it a popular choice for modern data teams seeking efficiency.

Designed to integrate seamlessly with the data warehouse, dbt enables analytics engineers to transform raw data into reliable datasets for analysis. Its SQL-centric approach reduces the learning curve for users familiar with it, allowing powerful transformations and data modeling without needing a custom backend. While widely beneficial, dbt could improve in areas like version management and support for complex transformations out of the box.

What are the most valuable features of dbt?

SQL-Based Development: Facilitates transformations using SQL, streamlining the data modeling process.
Modularity: Encourages reusable components, making projects easier to manage and scale.
Version Control: Integrates with version control systems to track changes and collaborate effectively.
Testing Framework: Ensures data quality through automated tests, increasing trust in data outputs.

What benefits should you expect from using dbt?

Efficiency: Cuts down data processing times, allowing faster access to insights.
Collaboration: Promotes teamwork through shared data models and a common working language.
Scalability: Supports growing data demands by transforming complex data more flexibly and modularly.
Transparency: Provides clear documentation and lineage tracking, aiding in troubleshooting and understanding.

In the finance industry, dbt helps in cleansing and preparing transactional data for analysis, leading to more accurate financial reporting. In e-commerce, it empowers teams to rapidly integrate and analyze customer behavior data, optimizing marketing strategies and improving user experience.

dbt Labs

StreamSets is a data integration platform that enables organizations to efficiently move and process data across various systems. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing, deploying, and managing data pipelines, allowing users to easily connect to various data sources and destinations. StreamSets also provides real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, ensuring that data is flowing smoothly and any issues are quickly addressed.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets vs. dbt

July 2025

Free Report: StreamSets vs. dbt

Find out what your peers are saying about StreamSets vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our StreamSets vs. dbt report.

See our list of best Data Integration vendors.

We monitor all Data Integration reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.