Apache Airflow vs. Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) vs. Stitch
ETL software comparison
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Most businesses have data stored in a variety of locations, from in-house databases to SaaS platforms. To get a full picture of their finances and operations, they pull data from all those sources into a data warehouse or data lake and run analytics against it. But they don't want to build and maintain their own data pipelines.
Fortunately, it’s not necessary to code everything in-house. Here's an comparison of two such tools, head to head.
About Apache Airflow
Apache Airflow is an open source project that lets developers orchestrate workflows to extract, transform, load, and store data.
About Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Pentaho, a subsidiary of Hitachi Vantara, is an open source platform for data integration and analytics. The software comes in a free community edition and a subscription-based enterprise edition. It runs on-premises rather than as a SaaS application.
About Stitch
Stitch Data Loader is a cloud-based platform for ETL — extract, transform, and load. More than 3,000 companies use Stitch to move billions of records every day from SaaS applications and databases into data warehouses and data lakes, where it can be analyzed with BI tools. Stitch is a Talend company and is part of the Talend Data Fabric.
 |  |  | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Orchestration, scheduling, workflows | Business intelligence, data integration, ETL | Data ingestion, ELT | |||||||||||
| Database replication | Only via plugins | Full table; incremental via binary logs or SELECT/replication keys | Full table; incremental via change data capture or SELECT/replication keys | |||||||||||
| SaaS sources | Only via plugins | Only Salesforce and Google Analytics | More than 100 | |||||||||||
| Ability for customers to add new data sources | Yes | No | Yes | |||||||||||
| Connects to data warehouses? Data lakes? | Yes / Yes | Yes / Yes | Yes / Yes | |||||||||||
| Transparent pricing | Yes | No | Yes | |||||||||||
G2 customer satisfaction | Not Rated | 4.2/5 | 4.8/5 | |||||||||||
| Support SLAs | No | Yes | Available | |||||||||||
| Purchase process | Free to download and use | Requires a conversation with sales | Options for self-service or talking with sales. Also available from the AWS store. | |||||||||||
| Compliance, governance, and security certifications | None | None | HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2 | |||||||||||
| Data sharing | Yes, via plugins | Yes | Yes, through Talend Data Fabric | |||||||||||
| Vendor lock-in | Free to use | Annual contracts. Open source version available | Month to month or annual contracts. Open source integrations | |||||||||||
| Developer tools | Experimental REST API | REST API | Import API, Stitch Connect API for integrating Stitch with other platforms, Singer open source project | |||||||||||
Let's dive into some of the details of each platform.
Transformations
Apache Airflow
Apache Airflow is a powerful tool for authoring, scheduling, and monitoring workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAG) of tasks. A DAG is a topological representation of the way data flows within a system. Airflow manages execution dependencies among jobs (known as operators in Airflow parlance) in the DAG, and programmatically handles job failures, retries, and alerting. Developers can write Python code to transform data as an action in a workflow.
Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Pentaho supports a wide variety of pre- and post-load transformations through dragging and dropping more than two dozen kinds of operations onto its work area. In addition, users can drag and drop custom scripts in Python, Java, JavaScript, and SQL onto the canvas.
Stitch
Stitch is an ELT product. Within the pipeline, Stitch does only transformations that are required for compatibility with the destination, such as translating data types or denesting data when relevant. Stitch is part of Talend, which also provides tools for transforming data either within the data warehouse or via external processing engines such as Spark and MapReduce. Transformations can be defined in SQL, Python, Java, or via graphical user interface.
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Connectors: Data sources and destinations
Each of these tools supports a variety of data sources and destinations.
Apache Airflow
Airflow orchestrates workflows to extract, transform, load, and store data. It run <b>tasks</b>, which are sets of activities, via <b>operators</b>, which are templates for tasks that can by Python functions or external scripts. Developers can create operators for any source or destination. In addition, Airflow supports plugins that implement operators and <b>hooks</b> — interfaces to external platforms. The Airflow community has built plugins for databases like MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server and SaaS platforms such as Salesforce, Stripe, and Facebook Ads.
Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Pentaho can take many file types as input, but it can connect to only two SaaS platforms: Google Analytics and Salesforce. It connects to more than 40 databases, as sources or destinations, via JDBC, ODBC, or plugins.
Stitch
Stitch supports more than 100 database and SaaS integrationsas data sources, and eight data warehouse and data lake destinations. Customers can contract with Stitch to build new sources, and anyone can add a new source to Stitch by developing it according to the standards laid out in Singer, an open source toolkit for writing scripts that move data. Singer integrations can be run independently, regardless of whether the user is a Stitch customer. Running Singer integrations on Stitch’s platform allows users to take advantage of Stitch's monitoring, scheduling, credential management, and autoscaling features.
Support, documentation, and training
Data integration tools can be complex, so vendors offer several ways to help their customers. Online documentation is the first resource users often turn to, and support teams can answer questions that aren't covered in the docs. Vendors of the more complicated tools may also offer training services.
Apache Airflow
The open source community provides Airflow support through a Slack community. Documentation includes quick start and how-to guides. Other than a tutorial on the Apache website there are no training resources.
Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Pentaho provides support through a support portal and a community website. Premium support SLAs are available. There's no live support within the application. Documentation is comprehensive. Pentaho provides free and paid training resources, including videos and instructor-led training. A certification program is also available.
Stitch
Stitch provides in-app chat support to all customers, and phone support is available for Enterprise customers. Support SLAs are available. Documentation is comprehensive and is open source — anyone can contribute additions and improvements or repurpose the content. Stitch does not provide training services.
Pricing
Apache Airflow
Airflow is free and open source, licensed under Apache License 2.0.
Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Pentaho provides a 30-day trial download. Contract pricing isn't disclosed.
Stitch
Stitch has pricing that scales to fit a wide range of budgets and company sizes. All new users get an unlimited 14-day trial. Standard plans range from $100 to $1,250 per month depending on scale, with discounts for paying annually. Enterprise plans for larger organizations and mission-critical use cases can include custom features, data volumes, and service levels, and are priced individually.
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