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Fivetran vs Airbyte
Airbyte Cloud's $/GB lands cheaper than Fivetran's MAR around the 25M-MAR mark for typical row-size profiles. Self-hosted Airbyte beats both above 200M MAR once a 0.5 FTE is loaded. Fivetran retains the connector-breadth advantage and the freshest SaaS-source library.
Pick Fivetran when
- › The source list is dominated by mainstream SaaS (Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, NetSuite).
- › Connector freshness and reliability matter more than $/M rate.
- › Premium tier log-based CDC for major databases is in scope.
- › The team prefers vendor support to platform engineering.
Pick Airbyte when
- › Row volume is above 25M MAR-equivalent and price sensitivity is high.
- › Team has Kubernetes operations capacity for self-hosting.
- › Custom connectors or OSS-pedigree matters to the architecture group.
- › Agent Operations or BYOC deployment is on the roadmap.
Price comparison at three workload sizes
| Workload | Fivetran | Airbyte |
|---|---|---|
| 10M MAR, daily, 5 connectors | $680/mo | $320/mo (Cloud) | $200 + FTE (OSS) |
| 50M MAR, hourly, 10 connectors | $2,400/mo | $1,100/mo (Cloud) | $400 + FTE (OSS) |
| 200M MAR, 15-min, 20 connectors | $9,600/mo | $4,200/mo (Cloud) | $1,200 + FTE (OSS) |
Estimates from each vendor's published pricing page. Tune to your shape with the /tco-calculator.
Decision aid
- Mid-market default: Fivetran for breadth, Airbyte Cloud for cost
- Cost-sensitive at scale: Self-hosted Airbyte (load the 0.5 FTE honestly)
- Premium CDC: Fivetran Premium tier
- Long-tail SaaS gap: Add Portable alongside either
Related
Written by Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Founder of Digital Signet. Independent reference, no vendor sponsorship.
Sources logged at /sources. Pricing-change history at /changelog. Last reviewed 2026-06-21.