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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd)
dbt
Ranking in Data Integration
38th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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

"It makes it easy to collect data from different sources."
"The most important feature is that it can help you do the multi-threading concepts."
"The user interface is very good. It makes me feel very comfortable when I am using the tool."
"The best part of this product is the extraction, transformation, and load."
"It is beneficial that the solution is written with Spark as the back end."
"The solution handles large volumes of data very well. One of its best features is its ability to integrate data end-to-end, from pulling data from the source to accessing Databricks. This makes it quite useful for our needs."
"Azure Data Factory is a low code, no code platform, which is helpful."
"The data copy template is a valuable feature."
"The product is developer-friendly."
 

Cons

"When working with AWS, we have noticed that the difference between ADF and AWS is that AWS is more customer-focused. They're more responsive compared to any other company. ADF is not as good as AWS, but it should be. If AWS is ten out of ten, ADF is around eight out of ten. I think AWS is easier to understand from the GUI perspective compared to ADF."
"You cannot use a custom data delimiter, which means that you have problems receiving data in certain formats."
"They require more detailed error reporting, data normalization tools, easier connectivity to other services, more data services, and greater compatibility with other commonly used schemas."
"This solution is currently only useful for basic data movement and file extractions, which we would like to see developed to handle more complex data transformations."
"I would like to be informed about the changes ahead of time, so we are aware of what's coming."
"Some prebuilt data source or data connection aspects are generic."
"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."
"While it has a range of connectors for various systems, such as ERP systems, the support for these connectors can be lacking."
"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a pay-as-you-go model, where you pay for what you consume."
"The pricing is pay-as-you-go or reserve instance. Of the two options, reserve instance is much cheaper."
"The cost is based on the amount of data sets that we are ingesting."
"It seems very low initially, but as the data grows, the solution’s bills grow exponentially."
"The pricing model is based on usage and is not cheap."
"Data Factory is expensive."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The pricing is a bit on the higher end."
"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%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.