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Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics 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

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
Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 2.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Aqeel UR Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Transform data efficiently with rich features but there's challenges with large datasets
Currently, I am using Pentaho Data Integration for transforming data and then loading it into different platforms. Sometimes, I use it in conjunction with AWS, particularly S3 and Redshift, to execute the copy command for data processing Pentaho Data Integration is easy to use, especially when…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is developer-friendly."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to use PL/SQL statements inside the data transformations and jobs."
"The area where Lumada has helped us is in the commercial area. There are many extractions to compose reports about our sales team performance and production steps. Since we are using Lumada to gather data from each industry in each country. We can get data from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia at the same time. We can then concentrate and consolidate it in only one place, like our data warehouse. This improves our production performance and need for information about the industry, production data, and commercial data."
"It has improved our data integration capabilities​."
"We can schedule job execution in the BA Server, which is the front-end product we're using right now. That scheduling interface is nice."
"We're using the PDI and the repository function, and they give us the ability to easily generate reporting and output, and to access data. We also like the ability to schedule."
"The product is user-friendly and intuitive"
"It's my understanding that the product can scale."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to create many API integrations. I'm always working with advertising agents and using Facebook and Instagram to do campaigns. We use Pentaho to get the results from these campaigns and to create dashboards to analyze the results."
 

Cons

"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
"Parallel execution could be better in Pentaho. It's very simple but I don't think it works well."
"If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was."
"The reporting definitely needs improvement. There are a lot of general, basic features that it doesn't have. A simple feature you would expect a reporting tool to have is the ability to search the repository for a report. It doesn't even have that capability. That's been a feature that we've been asking for since the beginning and it hasn't been implemented yet."
"In the Community edition, it would be nice to have more modules that allow you to code directly within the application. It could have R or Python completely integrated into it, but this could also be because I'm using an older version."
"The product needs more plugins."
"While Pentaho Data Integration is very friendly, it is not very useful when there isn't a lot of data to handle."
"I have been facing some difficulties when working with large datasets. It seems that when there is a large amount of data, I experience memory errors."
"I experience difficulties when handling millions of rows, as the data movement from one source to another becomes challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
"When we first started with it, it was much cheaper. It has gone up drastically, especially since Hitachi bought out Pentaho."
"We are using the Community Edition. We have been trying to use and sell the Enterprise version, but that hasn't been possible due to the budget required for it."
"I believe the pricing of the solution is more affordable than the competitors"
"Sometimes we provide the licenses or the customer can procure their own licenses. Previously, we had an enterprise license. Currently, we are on a community license as this is adequate for our needs."
"There is a good open source option (Community Edition)​."
"I primarily work on the Community Version, which is available to use free of charge."
"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."
"The solution reduced our ETL development time by a lot because a whole project used to take about a month to get done previously. After having Lumada, it took just a week. For a big company in Brazil, it saves a team at least $10,000 a month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.