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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
31st
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
18th
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 October 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 2.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.7%
dbt2.1%
Other96.2%
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."
"Pentaho Data Integration is quite simple to learn, and there is a lot of information available online."
"Flexible deployment, in any environment, is very important to us. That is the key reason why we ended up with these tools. Because we have a very highly secure environment, we must be able to install it in multiple environments on multiple different servers. The fact that we could use the same tool in all our environments, on-prem and in the cloud, was very important to us."
"We use Lumada’s ability to develop and deploy data pipeline templates once and reuse them. This is very important. When the entire pipeline is automated, we do not have any issues in respect to deployment of code or with code working in one environment but not working in another environment. We have saved a lot of time and effort from that perspective because it is easy to build ETL pipelines."
"Sometimes, it took a whole team about two weeks to get all the data to prepare and present it. After the optimization of the data, it took about one to two hours to do the whole process. Therefore, it has helped a lot when you talk about money, because it doesn't take a whole team to do it, just one person to do one project at a time and run it when you want to run it. So, it has helped a lot on that side."
"It is easy to use, install, and start working with."
"The solution offers features for data integration and migration. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics allows the integration of multiple data sources into one. The product is user-friendly and intuitive to use for almost any business."
"Lumada has allowed us to interact with our employees more effectively and compensate them properly. One of the cool things is that we use it to generate commissions for our salespeople and bonuses for our warehouse people. It allows us to get information out to them in a timely fashion. We can also see where they're at and how they're doing."
 

Cons

"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
"Its basic functionality doesn't need a whole lot of change. There could be some improvement in the consistency of the behavior of different transformation steps. The software did start as open-source and a lot of the fundamental, everyday transformation steps that you use when building ETL jobs were developed by different people. It is not a seamless paradigm. A table input step has a different way of thinking than a data merge step."
"Communicating with the vendor is challenging, and this hinders its performance in free tool setups."
"I would like to see improvement when it comes to integrating structured data with text data or anything that is unstructured. Sometimes we get all kinds of different files that we need to integrate into the warehouse."
"Should provide additional control for the data warehouse"
"​I work with the Community Edition, therefore I do not have support. There was an issue that I could not resolve with community support.​"
"I would like to see improvements made for real-time data processing."
"In terms of the flexibility to deploy in any environment, such as on-premise or in the cloud, we can do the cloud deployment only through virtual machines. We might also be able to work on different environments through Docker or Kubernetes, but we don't have an Azure app or an AWS app for easy deployment to the cloud. We can only do it through virtual machines, which is a problem, but we can manage it. We also work with Databricks because it works with Spark. We can work with clustered servers, and we can easily do the deployment in the cloud. With a right-click, we can deploy Databricks through the app on AWS or Azure cloud."
"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."
"The pricing has been pretty good. I'm used to using everything open-source or freeware-based. I understand that organizations need to make sure that the solutions are secure, and that's basically where I hit a roadblock in my current organization. They needed to ensure that we had a license and we had a secure way of accessing it so that no outside parties could get access to our data, but in terms of pricing, considering how much other teams are spending on cloud solutions or even their existing solutions, its price point is pretty good. At this time, there are no additional costs. We just have the licensing fees."
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
"You don't need the Enterprise Edition, you can go with the Community Edition. That way you can use it for free and, for free, it's a pretty good tool to use."
"When we first started with it, it was much cheaper. It has gone up drastically, especially since Hitachi bought out Pentaho."
"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"There is a good open source option (Community Edition)​."
"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise25
 

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
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