Hevo vs Meltano: How to Choose the Right Data Integration Platform

When teams start exploring data integration tools, the two names that often come up are Hevo and Meltano. Both are promising tools that make data movement easier, but their approach differs.

Hevo is built for speed and simplicity. It helps you move data across systems even as a complete beginner, so your analysts and business teams can work independently.

Meltano, on the other hand, is built for flexibility and ownership. It gives developers the freedom to customize every part of a pipeline.

If you are undecided which one fits your business better, you are in the right place. In this guide, we will explore Hevo vs Meltano in detail, comparing their features, pricing, performance, and ideal use cases.

By the end, you will know which tool aligns best with your team’s skills, data needs, and long-term goals.

Key Takeaways

Choose Hevo if you want a simple, reliable, auto-scaling, no-code ETL and ELT platform that automates data pipelines with enterprise-grade performance.
Choose Meltano for complete control over your data infrastructure with an open-source framework that lets your engineering team build fully customizable ELT workflows.

What Is Hevo?

G2 rating: 4.4 (271)

Garter Rating: 4.4 (3)

Hevo is an easy-to-use cloud-based data integration tool built for teams requiring hands-free, scalable, fault-tolerant pipelines. You set up pipelines with 150+ sources connected to warehouses, lakes, or analytics platforms within minutes.

The system handles updates, API changes, and scaling. This approach frees up technical teams to focus on analysis rather than infrastructure management. Hevo is ideal for teams that want to centralize their data quickly without hiring additional engineers.

Key features of Hevo

• Simple Setup: Hevo is simple to start and effortless to maintain, with guided setup, an intuitive interface, and automatic scaling that keeps pipelines running without engineering or operations overhead.
• Fault-tolerant architecture: Automatically detects and recovers failures, so your data pipelines run reliably without manual intervention.
• Custom connector support: Lets you build connectors through code or request new ones for flexibility in integrating with niche or proprietary systems.
• Scalable: Hevo automatically scales to handle growing data volumes and high-throughput workloads without downtime or manual tuning.
• Complete pipeline monitoring: Provides clear end-to-end visibility into every pipeline run to help you track performance, errors, and data freshness from a single dashboard.

Use cases

• Manage multi-region data pipelines: Run and monitor pipelines across global data centers with built-in latency management and compliance controls.
• Advanced data cleansing: Use pre-built functions and checks to automatically validate, cleanse, and standardize data before it reaches the warehouse.
• Simplify data governance: Maintain consistency and data quality across all sources through automated schema mapping and alerting.

Pricing

Hevo offers a transparent, tiered subscription model.

• Free: Process up to 1 million events per month with access for five users.
• Starter: Starts at $239 per month, supports up to 50 million events with SSH and SSL security for up to 10 users.
• Professional: Starts at $679 per month for 100 million events, reverse SSH, and access to unlimited users.
• Business Critical: Custom pricing for enterprises processing over 100 million events.

New users can opt for a free trial before committing to a plan.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Dedicated customer service to all users.
• No hidden fees or surprise charges.
• Efficient with large datasets without any performance dips during peak activity.

Cons:

• Cloud-only solution.

What Is Meltano?

G2 rating: 4.9 (7)

Meltano is an open-source ELT tool that provides a code-first, modular approach to building data pipelines. Originally developed at GitLab, it integrates the Singer protocol to offer 300+ connectors for extracting and loading data.

You can develop it locally, test in staging, and deploy to production, while using only the components you need. Meltano is built for data engineers who want complete control over their data infrastructure.

Key features of Meltano

• Modular plugin upgrades: Offers independent upgrades for extractors, loaders, and utilities without interrupting any part of the running workflow.
• Comprehensive support: Provides deep compatibility with Apache Airflow and Dagster to help teams build, coordinate, and schedule complex pipelines.
• Full DataOps integration: Delivers built-in version control, Git-based pipeline as code, automated CI/CD testing, and repeatable deployments as a part of a unified DataOps framework.
• CLI and API control: Adds command-line and API-based automation so teams can run, adjust, or trigger pipelines directly from their operational environments.
• dbt compatibility: Supports dbt workflows, so that you can manage transformations with existing models, tests, and deployment patterns.

Use cases

• Manage connector dependencies: Isolate and manage each Tap or Target’s dependencies using virtual environments to prevent global conflicts in your data ecosystem.
• Custom internal APIs: Build and maintain connectors for proprietary systems that no pre-built solution supports, and modify extraction logic to handle complex authentication.
• Maintain pipelines for legacy systems: Move data from on-premises ERPs, such as SAP ECC, or from custom in-house systems, into a warehouse using custom Singer taps.

Pricing

Meltano is an open-source platform, so it is free to use.

• Self-host: Supports self-managed infrastructure and helps you deploy separate infrastructures for each environment manually or by using hand-rolled CI/CD.
• Open Source Support: Paid service for advanced support, training, review, bug fixes, and more.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Strong open-source community support.
• Flexible deployments through Python CLI and YAML configuration.
• Allows PII filtering, hashing, and lightweight transformations.

Cons:

• Requires significant technical expertise and CLI comfort for setup and maintenance.
• Community-managed connectors might not be fully developed.
• Self-managed scaling requires significant engineering overhead and complexity.

Hevo vs Meltano: Detailed Comparison Table

Meltano vs Hevo: In-Depth Feature & Use Case Comparison

Now that we’ve seen what each data mapping tool offers, it’s time to compare them to understand how they perform in real-world use cases.

Ease of use and setup

Hevo provides a fully visual interface that allows non-technical teams to set up pipelines quickly. Connecting sources, mapping fields, and configuring transformations can be done entirely through the dashboard, with no coding required.

Meltano, on the other hand, is built for engineers comfortable with command-line and coding workflows. You can configure every component manually and maintain complete control.

So, if you have a non-technical team, Hevo is the easy choice. If you have a skilled engineering team and want granular control, Meltano offers better control.

Hevo:

I love the simplicity and ease free nature of setting up pipelines. As some members in our team who come from non-tech background having knowledge in data, this tools helps them get the work done faster without having to worry about the programming and infrastructure side of it. It easily integrates in our platform. The customer support is excellent as well.

Nikhil S.

Data Science Engineer

Meltano:

The best thing about Meltano is that it's simple and easy to use. It's portable, so I can run it on the command line, or in a docker container, or in any number of orchestration tools. There's a very active open source community and there are hundreds of plugins to connect to data sources and destinations, and if a plugin doesn't exist, there is good tooling provided to create one.

Matt M.

Mid-Market

Connector coverage

Choosing the right tool often comes down to whether your data sources are covered. Although Hevo and Meltano, when compared to tools like Fivetran, have fewer connectors, they deliver high quality and flexibility.

Hevo comes ready with more than 150 connectors that are tested and maintained for reliability. You can even request or create custom connectors if you need them.

Meltano offers over 300 Singer taps, but since they are community-maintained, quality can vary. You may need developers to maintain or tweak them. However, Meltano is often appreciated for offering an option to configure new taps quickly.

In practice, Hevo saves time by offering ready-to-use connectors, while Meltano is best for teams comfortable with custom development.

Hevo:

Not only is it cost-effective, but once you become familiar with it, setting up pipelines is incredibly straightforward. Whether you\'re working with SFTP, Snowflake, Webhook, Facebook, or other sources, the process is smooth and easy to manage. The integration capabilities are excellent. Customer support is outstanding—I have never had a ticket go unresolved, and every issue has been addressed within a very reasonable timeframe. I use Hevo at least once a week. However, now that most of our pipelines are already set up, I mainly use it for occasional checks or when I need to create new pipelines.

Verified User

User in Financial Services

Meltano:

The number of taps and targets is astounding and growing rapidly. Configuring a brand new tap/target that already exists usually only takes a few minutes. You spend longer getting your credentials than you spend setting up your plugin for the first time. That is also a statement on just how incredibly easy Meltano makes it to create a new tap from scratch. I\'ve built numerous taps with their SDK and some of them I was able to build them in less than a day.

Josh L.

Enterprise

Maintenance and scaling

Hevo is an auto-scaling platform that takes care of API updates, schema changes, and failure recovery without requiring manual intervention.

Meltano pipelines require self-managed infrastructure and manual scaling as datasets grow, which increases operational effort. It might struggle with large or complex pipelines compared to other Meltano alternatives, and is prone to errors if not monitored closely.

Hence, if you are expecting faster growth in data volumes, Hevo helps you scale easily.

Hevo:

Hevo for quick API connections and easy to set up ETL process for our large datasets. I like the UI Hevo has in compersion to its competitors. It is a very good out-of-the-box solution for those that aren\'t DBA experts.

Terrence K.

Sr Business Intelligence Analyst

View Review

Transformations and processing

Hevo supports real-time processing, alerts for any pipeline issues, and pre-load and post-load transformations. You can add custom transformations using SQL or code.

Meltano primarily offers control over post-load transformations and supports pre-load through mappers that filter fields or rename columns before loading. Setting up monitoring or real-time alerts on Meltano requires extra work.

So, if you require real-time ingestions and flexible transformations, Hevo is a more efficient option.

Hevo:

Very intuitive easy to use software. Many pre built integrations ready to use, specifically dbt core was very helpful. Allows for simplicity by bringing all transformations in models and pipelines to use SQL.

Matthew H.

Data Engineer

View Review

Pricing and budget

Hevo uses a predictable subscription-based pricing model, which is easy to budget for long-term usage. It doesn’t have any hidden charges, unlike other data ingestion tools.

Meltano is open-source and free to use at the base level, but the total cost can grow significantly. Expenses for developer time, custom connectors, deployment infrastructure, maintenance, training, and support often exceed the apparent savings of the free platform.

If you have limited technical resources or fast-growing datasets, Hevo is more cost-effective over time. However, if you have the budget for in-house engineering experts to manage pipelines, Meltano could be better.

Hevo:

Another highlight of Hevo is its pricing structure, which is among the best in the market. Comparing it to similar tools, Hevo offers incredible value for its features and functionalities. It\'s been a cost-effective solution without compromising on quality or performance.

Gireesh B.

Senior Software Engineer

View Review

Meltano:

I’ve been moving >1TB/day with Meltano for over a year now at a negligible cost; the next best alternative would’ve cost over a million or at least one FTE data engineer. It saves us at least $1M/yr and makes my job easy.

Quinn B.

Machine Learning Engineer

Why Does Hevo Stand Out?

Hevo delivers what matters most for data teams under pressure. While both platforms move data effectively, Hevo removes the friction that slows projects down by making the process mostly no-code. Its fully managed cloud ETL lets your teams focus on analysis and business decisions.

With Meltano, a significant portion of time goes to maintaining infrastructure and debugging connectors. For organizations where data engineering isn’t a priority, this difference matters tremendously.

With enterprise security and compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and SOC 2 Type 2, Hevo makes sure your data workflow is as smooth as possible.

Want to try it for yourself? Book a free demo today!

FAQs on Hevo vs Meltano

Chirag Agarwal Principal CX Engineer, Hevo Data

Chirag is a seasoned support engineer with over 7 years of experience, including over 4 years at Hevo Data, where he's been pivotal in crafting core CX components. As a team leader, he has driven innovation through recruitment, training, process optimization, and collaboration with multiple technologies. His expertise in lean solutions and tech exploration has enabled him to tackle complex challenges and build successful services.