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Azure Data Factory vs dbt 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

Azure Data Factory
Ranking in Data Integration
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (2nd)
dbt
Ranking in Data Integration
36th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Azure Data Factory is 7.9%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of dbt is 2.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Joy Maitra - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data pipeline creation with good analytics and and thorough monitoring
Azure Data Factory is a low code, no code platform, which is helpful. It provides many prebuilt functionalities that assist in building data pipelines. Also, it facilitates easy transformation with all required functionalities for analytics. Furthermore, it connects to different sources out-of-the-box, making integration much easier. The monitoring is very thorough, though a more readable version would be appreciable.
Ninad Magdum - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer-friendly and easy to use, but doesn't have many optimization options
We also use stored procedures and Talend. They are not replaced by dbt completely. We use dbt only for the transformation process. My recommendations would depend on an organization’s requirements and problems. I will recommend the tool to others. The product is developer-friendly. However, it is still dependent on the data warehouse for big data and optimization. It's just a SQL transformation tool. It doesn't have a lot of optimization options like Spark. It's a good tool for Snowflake. If it were only for Snowflake, I would have rated it an eight out of ten. However, there are other data platforms. Overall, I rate the tool a six and a half out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best part of this product is the extraction, transformation, and load."
"The valuable feature of Azure Data Factory is its integration capability, as it goes well with other components of Microsoft Azure."
"From my experience so far, the best feature is the ability to copy data to any environment. We have 100 connects and we can connect them to the system and copy the data from its respective system to any environment. That is the best feature."
"Data Factory's most valuable feature is Copy Activity."
"The security of the agent that is installed on-premises is very good."
"The data copy template is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable aspect is the copy capability."
"It's cloud-based, allowing multiple users to easily access the solution from the office or remote locations. I like that we can set up the security protocols for IP addresses, like allow lists. It's a pretty user-friendly product as well. The interface and build environment where you create pipelines are easy to use. It's straightforward to manage the digital transformation pipelines we build."
"The product is developer-friendly."
 

Cons

"I would like to be informed about the changes ahead of time, so we are aware of what's coming."
"In the next release, it's important that some sort of scheduler for running tasks is added."
"The product could provide more ways to import and export data."
"Data Factory could be improved by eliminating the need for a physical data area. We have to extract data using Data Factory, then create a staging database for it with Azure SQL, which is very, very expensive. Another improvement would be lowering the licensing cost."
"Some known bugs and issues with Azure Data Factory could be rectified."
"The pricing scheme is very complex and difficult to understand."
"Data Factory has so many features that it can be a little difficult or confusing to find some settings and configurations. I'm sure there's a way to make it a little easier to navigate."
"Data Factory would be improved if it were a little more configuration-oriented and not so code-oriented and if it had more automated features."
"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate Data Factory's pricing nine out of ten."
"Azure Data Factory gives better value for the price than other solutions such as Informatica."
"It's not particularly expensive."
"This is a cost-effective solution."
"Data Factory is expensive."
"It seems very low initially, but as the data grows, the solution’s bills grow exponentially."
"ADF is cheaper compared to AWS."
"Pricing is comparable, it's somewhere in the middle."
"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for dbt?
It is cheap because dbt is open source. If you compare the pay-per-service of Dbt with the open source option you can manage. We are managing the solution, when we were acquiring service from them....
What needs improvement with dbt?
SQL statements that beyond DML, are not possible. Currently, they are not possible in Dbt. Having more features in SQL statements will support us. Another issue is the terms of data ingestion becau...
What is your primary use case for dbt?
We use the solution to deal with data transformations inside different organizations.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. LinkedIn 7. Mastercard 8. Nestle 9. Pfizer 10. Samsung 11. Siemens 12. Toyota 13. Unilever 14. Verizon 15. Walmart 16. Accenture 17. American Express 18. AT&T 19. Bank of America 20. Cisco 21. Deloitte 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. JPMorgan Chase 27. Microsoft (Azure Data Factory is developed by Microsoft) 28. Oracle 29. Procter & Gamble 30. Salesforce 31. Shell 32. Visa
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Data Factory vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.