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IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs Talend Open Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

IBM InfoSphere DataStage
Ranking in Data Integration
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Talend Open Studio
Ranking in Data Integration
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of IBM InfoSphere DataStage is 5.0%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Talend Open Studio is 4.7%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Swetha S - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution streamlines design, development, and deployment with effective ETL features
The support has been really good. Typically, if we have any issues, we raise a ticket with IBM, and they help us resolve the issues if required. We also have the flexibility to submit a feature request to be included as part of the wishlist, potentially becoming a product feature in subsequent releases.
Costin Marzea - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows you to develop your own components and can be used as an OEM
Sometimes, scalability is part of planning. It depends on what you mean by scalability. People talk a lot about it, but scalability is not always about system functionality. Sometimes, it may be planning the job you're doing. If you want to split it into several jobs or servers, you don't actually have to have it built in as a functionality. You can create a job using a loop, which runs and controls several jobs in a loop that may be controlled. Scaling should not always be part of the infrastructure based on whether the engine can scale or not. I think it's your plan or project that should scale and split, and you can define these parameters. These parameters include how many servers you want to run or how many executions you want to do on different parts of the data. It's not always an issue of the engine running. Sometimes, your database should be configured to support partitioning. The product may scale very well without partitioning, but if the basic response is very slow, you didn't solve the problem. You should solve the problems at a higher level, not just at the execution level. They should be solved at the database level and communication level, and you should have firewalls. We are trying to add to the open source the ability to generate code for containers and Kubernetes that exist in the subscription version. Once you do this, Kubernetes will take care of the scaling, so there is no problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has improved the time it takes to perform tasks related to batch applications."
"It is quite useful and powerful."
"The support has been really good."
"We can view what we want to do. We can transform data and put them on tables."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to transfer information via notes."
"Offers great flexibility."
"ETL is the most valuable feature."
"We like the flexibility of modeling."
"Talend can connect to multiple data sources, including relational data sources, ERP, CRM, and others."
"We're sold on the customization part of the solution."
"Stability feels fine."
"A helpful feature for us is the integration with NoSQL databases."
"You can use Talend as a stand-alone application without customization to collect data and generate reports over dashboards. It's got great functionality."
"It is user-friendly and the interface is good."
"The most valuable feature for me when it comes to this solution is that it's easy to use."
"The solution's technical support is responsive and helpful."
 

Cons

"The pricing should be lower."
"There could be more customization options for the product."
"I really like this tool, but the administration should be on the same client application because a lot of administration features are not on the client-side, and they usually need to have administrative access. It's quite complicated to force IT teams to have separate administrative access from the developers."
"I wonder if it supports other areas, such as cloud environments with open source support, or EdgeShift."
"We would be happy to see in next versions the ability to return several parameters from jobs. Now, jobs can return just one parameter. If they could return several parameters, that would be great."
"The setup is extremely difficult."
"Its documentation is not up to the mark. While building APIs, we had a lot of problems trying to get around it because it is not very user-friendly. We tried to get hold of API documentation, but the documentation is not very well thought out. It should be more structured and elaborate. In terms of additional features, I would like to see good reporting on performance and performance-tuning recommendations that can be based on AI. I would also like to see better data profiling information being reported on InfoSphere."
"The interface needs work to be more user-friendly."
"he overall marketing and documentation of this product need to improve a lot."
"In terms of features, it has all the features that I need. However, it consumes a lot of resources. It is using a lot of RAM, and they need to fix the issue related to resource consumption. It currently requires more than 24 gigabytes of RAM, which is a big amount of RAM."
"The security features could be improved."
"The solution should offer better integration with other products."
"The pricing could be lower. They should work to make it more affordable."
"Talent consumes a lot of resources on my PC."
"The stability of the solution could improve when running jobs. There can be errors when running projects but in the end, it works well and the errors do not impact the result."
"In terms of what can be improved, the scheduling is not there in the sister version, while it is there in the cloud one, which is a paid version. If all kinds of scheduling could be available on the Open Studio that we generally use and practice on, that would be great. The scheduling of the data migration is currently not available in the sister version of Talend Open Studio that we are working on. It is available in the advanced version of the Talend. This is the one thing that can be improvised."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our internal team takes care of group licensing and cost. We don't have individual licenses. We have group licensing at the company level. Usually, IBM doesn't charge anything separately on the licensing side. For storage and everything else, we are paying around $6,000 per month, which is not very high. It includes Linux data storage, execution, and licensing. They're charging $40 for one-hour execution. Based on that, we are spending around $2,000 on the production environment and $1,000 on the lower environment for testing and development-side executions. For the mainframe, we are using the Db2 mainframe database, and we are spending around $1,000 on the Db2 mainframe database as well. All this comes out to be around $6,000. We, however, would like to have some cost reduction."
"The price is expensive but there are no licensing fees."
"High-cost of ownership: They could take a page from open source software."
"The pricing depends on the setup. However, we paid $100,000 as a one-time cost for an on-premises setup."
"Pricing varies based on use, and it is not as costly as some competing enterprise solutions."
"I have no information on the exact pricing for IBM InfoSphere DataStage because the solution is usually procured by the clients my company works with, though the pricing is higher compared to other solutions, so many clients choose to go with a different solution rather than IBM InfoSphere DataStage."
"Small and medium-sized companies cannot afford to pay for this solution."
"It's very expensive."
"Talend is free and you can download it."
"Pricing and licensing are fairly straightforward. It is reasonably priced and managed."
"It is an open-source product."
"Pricing is always a challenge. It is quite an expensive model, but because the platform is so simple to use, we haven't had to purchase any additional licenses."
"Open Studio has a basic license and additional costs for services, including customer support and technical assistance."
"The cost for one year for the ETL tools, not for the big data, is 6K per year. It is a good price."
"Price could be lower. It is getting too expensive when compared to some other solutions, which is actually a little bit concerning."
"The paid version of this solution has a very high price, but even with the limitations, the Community version works fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Would you upgrade to more premium versions of IBM InfoSphere DataStage?
My company currently uses the free version of the product, and we are definitely switching to a paid one. We needed a tool that can help us not only integrate our data but use it effectively. For ...
Is IBM InfoSphere DataStage more difficult to use compared to other tools in the field?
I think the tool may cause some difficulties if you have not used other data integration solutions before. I have worked at companies that used different tools for data integration, and they work ...
Do you rely on IBM Cloud Paks for your data? Have you utilized this product, or do you use IBM InfoSphere DataStage without it?
IBM Cloud Paks makes a big difference in your data integration. My company has been using it alongside IBM InfoSphere DataStage and while the main product is good on its own, this one truly expands...
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What do you like most about Talend Open Studio?
It is easy to use and covers most of the functions needed. We can use the code without any extra effort. The open source is very good. They have the same commercials with additional connectors. The...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Open Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dubai Statistics Center, Etisalat Egypt
Almerys, BF&M, Findus
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs. Talend Open Studio and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.