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StreamSets 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
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (8th)
StreamSets
Ranking in Data Integration
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StreamSets is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
dbt1.7%
StreamSets1.2%
Other97.1%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2780388 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Streamlined Data engineering and built-in lineages
The best features of dbt include lineage and Jinja templating languages that make it easy for creating pipelines. The built-in lineage feature provides a good understanding of the several layers where data is being loaded in dbt, allowing visibility from different layers into the end product. dbt has positively impacted version controlling as it has different version control steps involved. The specific improvements seen with version control in dbt are that it has helped trace the data lineage, enabled faster trace and rollbacks, and enabled safe collaboration at every scale, which has improved data quality. A return on investment has been seen from using dbt as the time has reduced while utilizing dbt in the form of data pipelines and ETL scripting. There is operational efficiency achieved, and data quality and governance have also been achieved with modular SQL and version controlling, which reduced duplication of data and data errors.
SS
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Enables effective batch loading with visual interface and enterprise support
One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infrastructure. I had to switch to a new EC2 box, even though the processor was not fully utilized. It would be beneficial if StreamSets addressed any potential memory leak issues to prevent unnecessary upgrades. Additionally, it would be a great enhancement if StreamSets could produce a lineage graph to visualize how the data has passed through the system.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"dbt has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to create our data pipelines much faster, going from ingestion of data to creating a data product in weeks instead of months, and we can do it in-house with the skillset we already have."
"The product is developer-friendly."
"There is operational efficiency achieved, and data quality and governance have also been achieved with modular SQL and version controlling, which reduced duplication of data and data errors."
"Since we migrated from SSIS to dbt model architecture, it takes around four hours only to complete a full refresh, and the client is now happy because our downtime was drastically reduced when we perform a complete refresh of the data."
"I have used Data Collector, Transformer, and Control Hub products from StreamSets. What I really like about these products is that they're very user-friendly. People who are not from a technological or core development background find it easy to get started and build data pipelines and connect to the databases. They would be comfortable like any technical person within a couple of weeks."
"StreamSets Transformer is a good feature because it helps you when you are developing applications and when you don't want to write a lot of code. That is the best feature overall."
"Also, the intuitive canvas for designing all the streams in the pipeline, along with the simplicity of the entire product are very big pluses for me. The software is very simple and straightforward. That is something that is needed right now."
"The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customize it to do what you need. Many other tools have started to use features similar to those introduced by StreamSets, like automated workflows that are easy to set up."
"The entire user interface is very simple and the simplicity of creating pipelines is something that I like very much about it. The design experience is very smooth."
"For me, the most valuable features in StreamSets have to be the Data Collector and Control Hub, but especially the Data Collector. That feature is very elegant and seamlessly works with numerous source systems."
"In StreamSets, everything is in one place."
"The Ease of configuration for pipes is amazing. It has a lot of connectors. Mainly, we can do everything with the data in the pipe. I really like the graphical interface too"
 

Cons

"Since dbt has a license cost, if a company is small and does not have much budget, they can explore other tools because there are other tools that provide the same functionality at a lower cost."
"Dbt is not as stable as preferred, as it has had a few outages in the current year itself, so improvement should be made in the outages section as it is not stable."
"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
"dbt can be improved as I find the co-pilot in dbt is not very good, and my team has tried using it but opted to move off it and use other co-pilots such as GitHub."
"Currently, we can only use the query to read data from SAP HANA. What we would like to see, as soon as possible, is the ability to read from multiple tables from SAP HANA. That would be a really good thing that we could use immediately. For example, if you have 100 tables in SQL Server or Oracle, then you could just point it to the schema or the 100 tables and ingestion information. However, you can't do that in SAP HANA since StreamSets currently is lacking in this. They do not have a multi-table feature for SAP HANA. Therefore, a multi-table origin for SAP HANA would be helpful."
"In terms of the product, I don't think there is any room for improvement because it is very good. One small area of improvement that is very much needed is on the knowledge base side. Sometimes, it is not very clear how to set up a certain process or a certain node for a person who's using the platform for the first time."
"The logging mechanism could be improved. If I am working on a pipeline, then create a job out of it and it is running, it will generate constant logs. So, the logging mechanism could be simplified. Now, it is a bit difficult to understand and filter the logs. It takes some time."
"StreamSets should provide a mechanism to be able to perform data quality assessment when the data is being moved from one source to the target."
"If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data."
"StreamSet works great for batch processing but we are looking for something that is more real-time. We need latency in numbers below milliseconds."
"We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back."
"The documentation is inadequate and has room for improvement because the technical support does not regularly update their documentation or the knowledge base."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
"The pricing is too fixed. It should be based on how much data you need to process. Some businesses are not so big that they process a lot of data."
"Its pricing is pretty much up to the mark. For smaller enterprises, it could be a big price to pay at the initial stage of operations, but the moment you have the Seed B or Seed C funding and you want to scale up your operations and aren't much worried about the funds, at that point in time, you would need a solution that could be scaled."
"We use the free version. It's great for a public, free release. Our stance is that the paid support model is too expensive to get into. They should honestly reevaluate that."
"The licensing is expensive, and there are other costs involved too. I know from using the software that you have to buy new features whenever there are new updates, which I don't really like. But initially, it was very good."
"I believe the pricing is not equitable."
"The overall cost is very flexible so it is not a burden for our organization... However, the cost should be improved. For small and mid-size organizations it might be a challenge."
"We are running the community version right now, which can be used free of charge."
"The pricing is affordable for any business."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for dbt?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost are managed by our infrastructure teams. As data engineers, we are not familiar with these details. I need to check with my infrastructure team on whethe...
What needs improvement with dbt?
I am not very familiar with dbt's version control system. I cannot identify any improvements in dbt because I am still exploring more functionality. I have been working with dbt for only three year...
What is your primary use case for dbt?
I am currently working with dbt and Snowflake together. We use dbt for data transformation purposes. We obtain the data and store the raw data directly into Snowflake, then perform all transformati...
What do you like most about StreamSets?
The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...
What needs improvement with StreamSets?
One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infr...
What is your primary use case for StreamSets?
We are using StreamSets for batch loading.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge
Find out what your peers are saying about StreamSets vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.