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FME vs Spring Cloud Data Flow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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
30th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Data Integration
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of FME is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Spring Cloud Data Flow1.1%
FME1.2%
Other97.7%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Gert Booysen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
NitinGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Lead at Naukri.com
Has a plug-and-play model and provides good robustness and scalability
The solution's community support could be improved. I don't know why the Spring Cloud Data Flow community is not very strong. Community support is very limited whenever you face any problem or are stuck somewhere. I'm not sure whether it has improved in the last six months because this pipeline was set up almost two years ago. I struggled with that a lot. For example, there was limited support whenever I got an exception and sought help from Stack Overflow or different forums. Interacting with Kubernetes needs a few certificates. You need to define all the certificates within your application. With the help of those certificates, your Java application or Spring Cloud Data Flow can interact with Kubernetes. I faced a lot of hurdles while placing those certificates. Despite following the official documentation to define all the replicas, readiness, and liveliness probes within the Spring Cloud Data Flow application, it was not working. So, I had to troubleshoot while digging in and debugging the internals of Spring Cloud Data Flow at that time. It was just a configuration mismatch, and I was doing nothing weird. There was a small spelling difference between how Spring Cloud Data Flow was expecting it and how I passed it. I was just following the official documentation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"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."
"It has a very friendly user interface. You don't need to use a lot of code. For us that's the most important aspect about it. Also, it has a lot of connectors and few forms. It has a strong facial aspect. It 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."
"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."
"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface."
"This product will assist us in saving costs in many ways: No longer need to continue paying high fees for proprietary software, reduce the number of software engineers needed to support the product, and achieve faster time to market by using this product for our middleware."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."
"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"Overall, Spring Cloud Data Flow is a really good solution and a lot cheaper than a lot of infrastructure provided by big companies like Google or Amazon."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
 

Cons

"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."
"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"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."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The visual user interface could use some help; it needs improvement."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"The documentation on offer is not that good."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."
"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."
"The product's price is reasonable."
"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."
"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
31%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with FME?
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 mod...
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...
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.
What needs improvement with Spring Cloud Data Flow?
There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or r...
What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?
We had a project for content management, which involved multiple applications each handling content ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and storage for different customers independently. We want...
What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?
I would definitely recommend Spring Cloud Data Flow. It requires minimal additional effort or time to understand how it works, and even non-specialists can use it effectively with its friendly docu...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System
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Find out what your peers are saying about FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
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