# Fivetran vs Airbyte in 2026: SaaS-to-Warehouse Tools

> Fivetran vs Airbyte in 2026 with real plan prices, plus where a flat-priced managed tool like Erathos beats both for SaaS-to-warehouse.

Source: https://www.erathos.com/en/blog/fivetran-vs-airbyte
Em português: https://www.erathos.com/blog/fivetran-vs-airbyte
Published: 2026-10-26
Category: Tool Guides

![Fivetran vs. Airbyte](https://cms-media.erathos.com/Fivetran vs. Airbyte.png)

The best data integration tools for moving SaaS data into a cloud warehouse in 2026 are Fivetran, Airbyte and Erathos. Fivetran fits teams that want the biggest managed catalog and can afford to pay by usage. Airbyte fits teams with engineers who can run open source. Erathos fits teams that want a managed service at a flat monthly price, especially with Brazilian sources.

Fivetran and Airbyte both changed their pricing in the last two years. Fivetran now charges a minimum on each small connection and bills deletes, and Airbyte doubled its entry plan in September 2026. So choosing between them mostly comes down to whether you'd rather pay with money or with engineering time. Below, we price both with their real plan numbers and show where a managed tool with a flat price beats each one.

## How do you choose a data integration tool for SaaS-to-warehouse pipelines?

The right tool has a maintained connector for each of your sources and can load into your warehouse. Its pricing should also be something you can predict from your row counts. After that, the difference is who runs the pipeline and how much control you get over each table.

Five checks work for any tool on the list:

1. **Connectors.** Not every connector in a vendor's catalog is maintained by the vendor. A beta or community connector is a weaker promise than one the vendor maintains, and "coming soon" means you can't use it yet.
2. **Destination.** Each tool supports a specific set of warehouses, and support for BigQuery says nothing about Snowflake.
3. **Pricing model.** Each tool counts usage differently. Fivetran bills by monthly active rows, Airbyte by credits or capacity, and Erathos by flat row tiers. So the numbers you need are how many rows you write to the warehouse each month, and how many of them are updates and deletes.
4. **Operations work.** With a managed service, the vendor runs the servers. Open source software is free to download, but your team has to run it, upgrade it and answer the pager.
5. **Control and freshness.** Plans differ in how often they can sync, whether you can schedule each table separately, and whether change data capture (CDC: reading inserts, updates and deletes from the database log) is included. [CDC needs a paid tier](https://www.erathos.com/en/blog/erathos-vs-airbyte-data-integration-platform-2026) on both Airbyte and Erathos, and you also have to set it up on the database side.

All three tools here are ELT tools: they extract and load raw data, and you transform it inside the warehouse (for example with dbt). If that split is new to you, here is [how ETL and ELT differ](https://www.erathos.com/en/blog/etl-vs-elt-key-differences).

## How does Fivetran pricing work in 2026?

Fivetran charges for every row that gets inserted, updated or deleted in a month (they call these monthly active rows, or MAR). Each row counts once per month, no matter how many times it changes. Since March 2025, the price per row drops with volume for each connection separately, and since January 2026, each small connection has a minimum charge.

Four changes since 2025 set what a Fivetran bill looks like today:

- **Volume discounts per connection (March 2025).** Fivetran [moved tiering from the account to the connection level](https://fivetran.com/docs/core-concepts/usage-based-pricing/pricing-updates/2025-pricing-faq), so volume discounts now apply to each connection on its own. If you have many connections of the same size, you pay more, and if one connection does most of the volume, you pay less. Fivetran says the change was a price cut for most customers, based on its own December 2024 calibration.
- **Free re-syncs (March 2025).** If a row is identical to the one already in the destination, Fivetran marks it free, so a full re-sync of unchanged data is free.
- **A $5 floor per connection (January 2026).** Standard connections that generate between 1 and 1 million MAR a month have a [$5 base charge](https://fivetran.com/docs/core-concepts/usage-based-pricing/pricing-updates/2026-pricing-updates). Connections with zero paid MAR pay nothing, and the Free plan has no base charge.
- **Deletes and history count (January 2026).** Deletes now count toward paid MAR. With history mode on, Fivetran also bills the repeated updates it tracks in a month.

The Free plan includes 500,000 MAR for connections. Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical don't list a price on the pricing page, so you'll need to use their calculator or talk to sales:

![Fivetran pricing](https://cms-media.erathos.com/Fivetran pricing)

Fivetran's strengths are its big catalog and compliance. It lists [700+ connectors](https://www.erathos.com/en/vs/fivetran), can sync every minute on Enterprise, has mature log-based CDC for Oracle, SQL Server, SAP and Db2, and covers PCI DSS Level 1 and HIPAA. It also completed its [all-stock merger with dbt Labs](https://www.fivetran.com/press/fivetran-dbt-labs-complete-merger-to-create-the-data-infrastructure-for-trusted-ai-agents) on June 1, 2026, so loading and transformation now come from the same company.

Surprise bills usually come from Fivetran pricing each connection separately. If you have 30 small SaaS connections, you pay at least 30 × $5 = $150 a month in base charges before any volume pricing. Each of those connections also starts at the most expensive end of its own price curve. Sources that delete a lot of rows, or tables with history mode on, now add MAR they didn't add in 2025.

## Airbyte in 2026: open source, Cloud, or self-hosted?

Airbyte has two versions. Airbyte Core is open source software you install and run yourself with no license cost. Airbyte Cloud is a hosted service, billed in credits on Standard and Plus, or by compute capacity on Pro and Enterprise Flex. In September 2026 Airbyte [doubled the Standard plan from $10 to $20 a month](https://docs.airbyte.com/release_notes/cloud) and raised extra credits from $2.50 to $5.

These are the Cloud plans after that change:

Plan

Price

What you get

Standard

$20/month, 5 credits, $5 per extra credit

Managed hosting, portal support with no SLA

Plus

From $189/month for 40 credits, $5 per extra credit

15-minute syncs, SSO, 2 workspaces, 24-hour response SLA

Pro

Custom, capacity-based

Syncs every 5 minutes, RBAC (role-based access control), multiple workspaces

Enterprise Flex

Custom

Airbyte runs the control plane, your data planes run inside your own cloud

API sources cost [6 credits per million rows and databases cost 4 credits per GB](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/cloud/managing-airbyte-cloud/manage-credits). So if you load 5 million API rows a month, you need 30 credits. On Standard that's $20 + 25 × $5 = $145 a month. Plus covers 40 / 6 = 6.67 million API rows for $189. Incremental syncs only charge for the rows that changed, while a full refresh charges for every row again.

If you go over your plan on Standard or Plus, your syncs keep running and Airbyte charges the extra credits afterwards (in arrears).

The catalog is large, with 700+ connectors, but Airbyte doesn't support them all the same way. Airbyte maintains its own connectors, while [Marketplace connectors come from the community, carry no SLA, and may ship breaking changes with no notice](https://docs.airbyte.com/integrations/connector-support-levels). Enterprise connectors like Oracle, SAP HANA and Db2 cost extra and only come with Pro and Enterprise. If a source is missing, you can build an HTTP API source yourself in the Connector Builder, which is a no-code tool.

Self-hosting Core saves the license cost, but your team then runs the platform itself:

1. **A machine to try it.** The quickstart runs on Docker Desktop with the `abctl` command and asks for [4 or more CPUs and at least 8 GB of memory](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/using-airbyte/getting-started/oss-quickstart).
2. **A Kubernetes cluster for production.** Airbyte is [built to deploy into Kubernetes with Helm](https://docs.airbyte.com/deploying-airbyte/).
3. **Supporting services.** A real deployment adds an object store for logs and state, an external database for Airbyte's metadata, a secrets manager and an ingress.
4. **Upgrades.** Helm chart versions do not match Airbyte versions one to one, so each upgrade starts with checking which chart goes with which release.

Integrate.io (a competitor to both tools) estimates the cloud servers alone cost [$500 to $3,000 or more a month](https://www.integrate.io/blog/airbyte-cost/), not counting anyone's salary. Airbyte also [no longer sells Self-Managed Enterprise](https://docs.airbyte.com/platform/enterprise-setup), so if you want a supported version that keeps data in your cloud, you now need Enterprise Flex. For a deeper look at this choice, see our [Erathos vs. Airbyte comparison](https://www.erathos.com/en/blog/erathos-vs-airbyte-data-integration-platform-2026).

## Fivetran vs. Airbyte: how do they compare?

Fivetran costs more money and less engineering time, and Airbyte is the other way around. Both list 700+ connectors, so catalog size won't decide between them.

Here is how they compare on the rest:

Fivetran

Airbyte

Pricing model

MAR per connection, $5 minimum per connection between 1 and 1M MAR

Credits on Standard and Plus, capacity on Pro and Flex, Core is free

Free option

Free plan with 500,000 MAR

Core is open source; Cloud has a 14-day trial

Entry paid price

Not listed; calculator or sales

$20/month (Standard)

Hosting

Managed only

Self-hosted (Core), managed (Cloud), hybrid (Enterprise Flex)

Fastest sync

1 minute (Enterprise)

15 minutes (Plus), 5 minutes (Pro and Flex)

CDC

Mature log-based CDC, including Oracle, SQL Server, SAP and Db2

Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB; Oracle, SAP HANA, Db2 as paid add-ons

Transformations

dbt, now part of the same company

Extract and load only; transform in the warehouse

Compliance

PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA

RBAC and in-boundary data planes on Pro and Flex

Fivetran is the better choice if you want the widest managed catalog and strict compliance, and can afford to pay for every active row. Airbyte is better if you have engineers who can run Kubernetes, or if you only need a few credits a month.

## Where does Erathos fit?

Erathos is a managed ELT platform with flat monthly plans based on how many rows you load. You can schedule each table separately, and it supports a lot of Brazilian SaaS tools. It's a good fit if you want Fivetran's "someone else runs it" model, but with a price you can read off a table. It loses on catalog size and Snowflake support.

Erathos counts the [rows written to your warehouse](https://www.erathos.com/en/pricing) each month and sells fixed tiers:

Plan

Price (yearly / monthly billing)

Rows per month

Fastest sync

Freemium

$0

Up to 1M

Daily

Movement

$29 / $35

Up to 2M

Hourly

Pro

$250 / $300

Up to 5M, with CDC and custom connectors

5 minutes

Enterprise

Custom

Up to 1.5 billion

5 minutes

Paid plans include unlimited connectors and jobs, so your price stays the same when you add a 31st small source. If your forecast goes past the plan limit, Erathos emails you before anything stops, and you can either trim jobs or upgrade. Prices are also listed in BRL, and support is available in English and Portuguese.

Going back to the example of 5 million API rows a month, Airbyte Standard is cheaper on paper at $145 a month, against $250 for Erathos Pro on yearly billing. For that price, Erathos Pro includes CDC and 5-minute syncs, plus full run history. Airbyte charges more credits for every extra million rows or full refresh.

Erathos also lets you control each table separately. Each connection holds many [jobs, one per table or API endpoint](https://docs.erathos.com/platform/connections/jobs), and each job has its own schedule, [sync type](https://docs.erathos.com/platform/connections/sync-types) and retries. So your orders table can refresh every 5 minutes while the product catalog loads once a day, from the same source.

Here is how one connection splits into jobs:

![How one Erathos connection schedules each table](https://cms-media.erathos.com/How one Erathos connection schedules each table)

The catalog has [141 connectors listed, 85 of them available today](https://www.erathos.com/en/blog/erathos-vs-airbyte-data-integration-platform-2026), including:

- **Brazilian sources.** Omie, Bling, Conta Azul, Tiny, Sankhya, RD Station, Asaas, Pagar.me, Vindi, Hotmart, Mercado Livre and VTEX, which Fivetran does not cover.
- **Global SaaS.** HubSpot, Stripe, Shopify, Zendesk, Jira, Meta Ads, Google Ads and TikTok Ads.
- **Databases.** MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, Firebird and Neo4j.
- **Destinations.** BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Azure SQL Server and S3 with Iceberg.

Erathos does have gaps. Snowflake as a destination is still coming soon, and so are Salesforce and Google Analytics as sources. Erathos only runs as a hosted service, so if you have to self-host, you'll need Airbyte Core. Fivetran is also stronger on [CDC across many databases and on PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance](https://www.erathos.com/en/vs/fivetran).

If it fits your stack, it can save a lot. Kamino, an Erathos customer, [cut its data costs by more than 90%](https://www.erathos.com/en/clientes) after moving to Erathos. You can see the full list on the [connectors page](https://www.erathos.com/en/connectors).

## Which data integration tool should you pick?

Fivetran is the best fit if you need the widest managed catalog and strict compliance. Airbyte is better if you have a platform team, or a source that only its catalog covers. Erathos fits if you want a flat monthly price and control over each table, especially with Brazilian sources loading into BigQuery, Redshift or Databricks.

These questions decide it, in order:

1. **Is your warehouse Snowflake?** Of these three, only Fivetran and Airbyte support it today, since Erathos support is coming soon.
2. **Do you need strict compliance (PCI DSS Level 1 or HIPAA) or log-based CDC on Oracle, SAP or Db2?** Fivetran is the strongest fit here, and its dbt merger helps if you already run dbt.
3. **Must the software run on your own servers?** Airbyte Core works if you have engineers who already run Kubernetes, and Enterprise Flex works if you want Airbyte to manage the control plane.
4. **Do your sources include Omie, Bling, Conta Azul, RD Station, VTEX or other Brazilian tools?** Erathos has managed connectors for them.
5. **Do you load many small SaaS sources on a fixed budget?** Erathos charges by row tier regardless of how many connections you have, while Fivetran adds $5 for each small connection.
6. **Is your volume small and steady, with mostly incremental API syncs?** Airbyte Standard is cheap on paper, but it's worth running the credit math against your real row counts first.

Here is the short version:

![Which ELT tool fits your SaaS pipeline](https://cms-media.erathos.com/Which ELT tool fits your SaaS pipeline)