FME vs Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Safe Software and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Safe Software is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.0, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6. Safe Software holds a 0.9% mindshare in DI, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Safe Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

FME

Read 7 FME reviews

3,790 Views
2,918 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Pentaho Data Integration an...

Read 61 Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics reviews

8,320 Views
6,573 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

FME

Pentaho Data Integration an...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and FME compete in data processes, each having unique strengths. Pentaho offers better customization due to its flexibility, while FME stands out with its data transformation capabilities.

Features: Pentaho excels with its comprehensive data integration solutions, offering business analytics and streamlined workflows. It efficiently handles complex data processes with its ETL capabilities, drag-and-drop interface, and adaptability to various data sources. FME is distinguished by its exceptional format compatibility, strong user interface, and advanced data transformation tools, supporting many file formats for intricate data manipulations.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho could improve by enhancing its big data handling capacity, simplifying its cloud deployment, and expanding user documentation. FME may benefit from reducing its complexity for new users, adding more native connectors, and providing better integration with non-spatial data systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho provides an intuitive deployment process supported by extensive documentation, ensuring a smooth integration experience. Its support services are responsive and effective. FME offers a straightforward deployment model, extensive support resources, and quick assistance through knowledgeable staff, making its support prompt and impressive.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho's competitive pricing structure makes it accessible for various organizations, delivering significant ROI through integrated analytics. FME involves a higher initial investment but provides excellent returns by optimizing complex workflows with its advanced capabilities. Pentaho is more cost-effective, while FME's premium features justify its higher pricing for specialized data handling requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed FME vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

FME vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics

September 2026

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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

FME

Ranking in Data Integration

31st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pentaho Data Integration an...

Ranking in Data Integration

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of FME is 0.9%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics	1.7%
FME	0.9%
Other	97.4%

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Gert Booysen

Software Solutions Leader at GE Vernova

Extensive format support and reliable integration enhance data management while new pricing model requires reassessment

I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side. They changed the licensing model, and that made customers think it is overpriced. Some customers were actually looking at alternatives. Pricing with the model changes was perceived negatively. I work primarily with enterprise customers, Vodacom, Eskom, so it's tier-one customers. For small customers, this solution is a bit too expensive. They don't really use it and just do direct integration on smaller implementations. This is basically used by tier-one customers. FME is still able to save time and money for clients. It's still a good investment. Regarding similar products to FME, GE developed a product called Data Fabric. That is a real-time operational integration platform, Data Fabric Network Connect, which is a GE Grid OS product. It is actually more expensive than FME, but the purpose is different as it's operational. The vendor in this case is GE, and it's a company that we bought that used to be called Greenbird. In current use scenarios, FME is still leading compared to Data Fabric. The GE product has a different application.

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Michelle Lawson

Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications

I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.

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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

"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."

"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."

"FME's features that I have found most valuable are that it has a very friendly user interface, you don't need to use a lot of code, it has a lot of connectors and few forms, and it has a strong facial aspect that can do a lot of facial analysis."

"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface. There is nothing better. It is very easy to debug because you can see all steps where there are failures. Overall the software is easy to optimize a process."

"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."

"We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else."

"All spatial features are unrivaled, and the possibility to execute them based on a scheduled trigger, manual, e-mail, Websocket, tweet, file/directory change or virtually any trigger is most valuable."

"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface."

"No software can give as complete functionality for fulfilling end user requirements as Pentaho."

"With this solution, instead of it taking a week, it was reduced to an afternoon, or about three hours."

"We've seen a 50 percent reduction in our ETL development time using the free version of Pentaho, saving about 1,000 euros per week and at least 50,000 euros annually."

"It is a very good tool if you need to work with data."

"The way it has improved our product is by giving our users the ability to do ad hoc reports, which is very important to our users. We can do predictive analysis on trends coming in for contracts, which is what our product does. The product helps users decide which way to go based on the predictive analysis done by Pentaho. Pentaho is not doing predictions, but reporting on the predictions that our product is doing. This is a big part of our product."

"I would say this is the best ETL tool in the market, considering this is open source and ease to use, very nice GUI."

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to create many API integrations. I'm always working with advertising agents and using Facebook and Instagram to do campaigns. We use Pentaho to get the results from these campaigns and to create dashboards to analyze the results."

"When we get a question from our CEO that needs a response and that requires a little bit of legwork of pulling in from various market data, our own in-house repositories, and everything else, it allows me to arrive at the solutions much faster than having to do it through scripting in Python, coding, or anything else."

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics pros

Cons

"Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side."

"FME is a great tool, but I don't know if we can scale it up since the prices are high and we would need to convince the decision makers to provide more budget."

"The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point."

"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."

"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."

"FME can improve the geographical transformation. I've had some problems with the geographical transformations, but it's probably mostly because I'm not the most skilled geographer in-house. The solution requires some in-depth knowledge to perform some functions."

"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."

"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."

"The product itself is great, the biggest downside in my opinion is that it is hard to find (hire) people with expertise."

"Although it is a low-code solution with a graphical interface, often the error messages that you get are of the type that a developer would be happy with. You get a big stack of red text and Java errors displayed on the screen, and less technical people can get intimidated by that. It can be a bit intimidating to get a wall of red error messages displayed. Other graphical tools that are focused at the power user level provide a much more user-friendly experience in dealing with your exceptions and guiding the user into where they've made the mistake."

"Its basic functionality doesn't need a whole lot of change. There could be some improvement in the consistency of the behavior of different transformation steps. The software did start as open-source and a lot of the fundamental, everyday transformation steps that you use when building ETL jobs were developed by different people. It is not a seamless paradigm. A table input step has a different way of thinking than a data merge step."

"Regarding the features, I find many issues using Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics when working with different environments, especially development environments and production environments, where I have faced many issues working with two environments."

"Some of the scheduling features about Lumada drive me buggy. The one issue that always drives me up the wall is when Daylight Savings Time changes. It doesn't take that into account elegantly. Every time it changes, I have to do something. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying."

"I would like to see improvement when it comes to integrating structured data with text data or anything that is unstructured. Sometimes we get all kinds of different files that we need to integrate into the warehouse."

"In terms of the flexibility to deploy in any environment, such as on-premise or in the cloud, we can do the cloud deployment only through virtual machines. We might also be able to work on different environments through Docker or Kubernetes, but we don't have an Azure app or an AWS app for easy deployment to the cloud. We can only do it through virtual machines, which is a problem, but we can manage it. We also work with Databricks because it works with Spark. We can work with clustered servers, and we can easily do the deployment in the cloud. With a right-click, we can deploy Databricks through the app on AWS or Azure cloud."

"The reporting definitely needs improvement. There are a lot of general, basic features that it doesn't have. A simple feature you would expect a reporting tool to have is the ability to search the repository for a report. It doesn't even have that capability. That's been a feature that we've been asking for since the beginning and it hasn't been implemented yet."

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used the standard licensing for our use of FME. The cost was approximately €15,000 annually. We always welcome less expensive solutions, if the solution could be less expensive it would be helpful."

"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."

"The product's price is reasonable."

"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."

"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"You don't need the Enterprise Edition, you can go with the Community Edition. That way you can use it for free and, for free, it's a pretty good tool to use."

"We are using the Community Edition. We have been trying to use and sell the Enterprise version, but that hasn't been possible due to the budget required for it."

"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."

"I think Lumada's price is fair compared to some of the others, like BusinessObjects, which is was the other thing that I used at my previous job. BusinessObject's price was more reasonable before SAP acquired it. They jacked the price up significantly. Oracle's OBIEE tool was also prohibitively expensive."

"You need to go through the paid version to have Hitachi Lumada specialized support. However, if you are using the free version, then you will have only the community support. You will depend on the releases from Hitachi to solve some problem or questions that you have, such as bug fixes. You will need to wait for the newest versions or releases to solve these types of problems."

"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

25%

Energy/Utilities Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Construction Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	32

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with FME?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for FME?

The use cases for FME are mainly integration to the GE Smallworld product. GE Smallworld is a GE product, and we are using it to integrate with other third-party products into GE Smallworld and ADM...

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What advice do you have for others considering FME?

The overall rating for FME is eight out of ten, and I prefer the feedback to be anonymous. My job title is Senior Solutions Architect.

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Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?

Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...

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What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?

In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...

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What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?

My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FME

September 2026

Download FME product report

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics

September 2026

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics report

Download Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics product report

Also Known As

No data available

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration

Overview

FME is a powerful tool designed for efficient geospatial data handling, supporting over 400 file formats and integrating with diverse systems. Its intuitive interface facilitates seamless automation of workflows, making it ideal for sectors that manage large spatial data volumes.

With FME, businesses automate data flows and manage GIS data transfers while integrating with tools like GE Smallworld. It empowers users with self-service capabilities for data processing and real-time event management. Despite its strengths, users note areas for improvement such as better mapping presentations, simpler loops, and more guidance on geographical transformations. Pricing remains a consideration for some markets. However, FME is a robust solution for massive data transformations, network infrastructure management, and automation of data quality control, especially in governmental contexts.

What are FME's key features?

Spatial Capabilities: Efficient handling of geospatial data through triggers and automation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with FME Flow, FME Form, and scripting languages like Python.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies data transformation and debugging without extensive coding.
Format Support: Over 400 file formats ensure wide-ranging compatibility.
System Integration: Connects with numerous systems, preferred for large spatial data volumes.

What benefits should users consider?

Automation: Streamlines workflows and reduces manual intervention.
Efficiency: Handles large datasets effectively, optimizing data operations.
Cost-Effectiveness: Despite pricing concerns, offers significant functionality for data processing.
Self-Service Capabilities: Enables users to manage and transform data independently.
Real-Time Processing: Supports real-time event handling for dynamic environments.

FME is widely adopted across industries that require precise geospatial data management such as government agencies needing to automate and control data processes efficiently or organizations handling complex network infrastructures that engage in frequent GIS data transfers. Its capacity for seamless integration with various systems enables practical use for extensive data transformations and automation, increasing operational efficiency in data-intensive sectors.

Safe Software

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics offers an intuitive platform for data workflows, enabling users to easily manage ETL processes across diverse data formats, ensuring seamless automation and development.

With its drag-and-drop interface, Pentaho allows for efficient ETL workflows without extensive coding. It supports a multitude of data formats and sources such as SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, CSV, and JSON. Advanced features like metadata injection and API integration enable seamless automation. However, improvements in big data performance, better cloud service integration, and enhanced real-time processing capabilities can enhance user experience. Additional connectors and improved documentation are sought after by many. Providing support for more programming languages and optimizing memory usage also presents opportunities for enhancement.

What are the key features of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics?

Drag-and-Drop Interface: Simplifies building workflows without coding.
Broad Data Support: Accommodates SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, CSV, and JSON.
Advanced Automation: Leverages metadata injection and API integration.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers value with comprehensive big data support.

What benefits should be evaluated in Pentaho reviews?

Versatility: Supports both on-premises and cloud solutions.
Data Integration: Facilitates seamless connection of disparate data sources.
Transparency: Enhances data management and reporting.
Scalability: Adapts to the growing data needs of organizations.

Pentaho is employed across finance, healthcare, and retail industries for ETL processes. It's instrumental in integrating data from ERP, SAP systems, Excel, and APIs to develop comprehensive reports and data models. Companies rely on its capabilities for both on-premises and cloud deployments, improving data transparency and management.

Hitachi Vantara

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute

Buyer's Guide

FME vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics

September 2026

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