Top 5 Best AWS Glue Alternatives & Competitors Gartner Rated

With the exponential increase in daily data, organizations look for a solution to integrate, transform, and consolidate their data into a single platform to increase performance through simplified analytics. 

AWS Glue is one such serverless ETL solution that helps organizations move data into enterprise-class data warehouses. Its close integrations with other AWS services, such as Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, and others, appeal to businesses that have already invested significantly in AWS. 

Despite being a cost-effective solution, AWS Glue’s limited built-in connectors and pitfalls in scheduling jobs and managing dependencies make companies look for a more robust and efficient solution that is easier to use. 

This guide will help you understand what to look for in an AWS Glue Alternatives and then walk you through the best alternatives available on the market.

Let’s begin!

Understanding AWS Glue

Amazon Web Services offers a serverless data integration tool called AWS Glue. This tool helps in data discovery, preparation, movement, and integration from various sources for machine learning (ML), analytics, and application development.

AWS Glue is useful for organizations that manage large amounts of data. It is an easy-to-use and cost-effective tool. It is specifically designed for companies that execute ETL jobs on a serverless platform based on Apache Spark.

What should you look for in an AWS Glue Alternative?

• Support for traditional database queries: AWS Glue does not well support traditional database queries designed for use with relational databases. Therefore, consider an option that supports traditional database queries.
• Friendly tool for Tech and Non-Tech Users: Teams that use AWS Glue must have a solid understanding of Apache Spark. If you do not have an engineering team well-versed in Apache Spark, you need to consider other options for your ETL needs.
• Real-Time Synchronization: Full syncs are incapable of providing timely, i.e., real-time, updates. They take a long time; hence, incremental syncs are necessary because they extract only the latest changes. Since all data is initially staged on S3 in AWS Glue, there is no option for incremental sync from your data source. To perform real-time ETL jobs, you need to consider another alternative.
• Compatibility: AWS Glue is only compatible with services hosted on AWS. If your organization’s sources are not hosted on AWS, then you might require the assistance of a third-party ETL service.
• Built-in Connectors: AWS Glue has a limited set of built-in connectors, so look for an alternative with a large set of pre-built connectors to support all your data sources. 

List of 5 Best AWS Glue Alternatives

We have made a list of alternatives based on several categories, including integration and deployment, service and support, etc.

• Hevo
• Informatica
• Alteryx
• Stitch
• Matillion

1. Hevo

G2 Rating: 4.3
Gartner: 4.6
Hevo is a data pipeline platform that enables you to easily replicate data from all your sources to the destination of your choice, run transformations for analytics, and deliver operational intelligence to business tools. As a no-code data pipeline, Hevo is easy to use even for non-technical users. 

Advantages of Using Hevo

• Using Hevo can save time and effort because it is fully automated and requires virtually zero maintenance.
• You can scale your data infrastructure as required because the platform supports 150+ ready-to-use integrations along with 60+ free sources.
• Hevo has a very intuitive UI to make setting up a pipeline easier for you.
• Hevo also provides pre-load transformation, meaning you can transform your data multiple ways before loading it to the destination.

Pricing

Hevo’s pricing model is transparent, with no hidden costs. You can try out Hevo’s 14-day free trial to see if it fits your needs.

2. Informatica

G2 Rating: 4.4
Gartner Rating: 4.4
Informatica is a software development company that provides products for data integration based on ETL architecture. It offers data integration software and services to various businesses, industries, and government organizations, such as telecommunications, health care, financial services, and insurance. It offers multiple features like data masking, data quality, replica, virtualization, master data management, etc.

Key Features of Informatica

• It is simple and quick to share large amounts of data, and there is no delay. You can easily replicate information across load servers and cloud servers in a short amount of time. 
• Its monitoring feature is beneficial for keeping track of job progress and providing information about the job’s status and problems if there is any failure.

Limitation of Informatica

• During the initial setup stages, the deployment and configuration processes take significant time and are slightly complicated. 
• Although scheduling options are available for workflow or jobs, they are limited and can handle only a limited number of scheduled jobs. The lookup transformation on large tables significantly uses more memory and CPU than on smaller tables.

Pricing

The pricing for Informatica is cheaper than AWS Glue but still more expensive than other solutions. The base version of Integration Cloud starts at $2,000 per month. The pricing of add-on tiers is undisclosed.

3. Alteryx

G2 Rating: 4.6
Gartner Rating: 4.5
The Alteryx platform is an analytics automation tool that can assist with data collection, preparation, and blending. It can make use of this data to speed up processes, and it is also able to provide actionable business insights.

Key Features of Alteryx

• It requires no coding knowledge, as it is a drag-and-drop tool.
• The Alteryx community is an excellent resource for you to consult and obtain answers and advice from industry professionals.
• Alteryx provides its own proprietary format, i.e., data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding scheme designed by the company, which is not disclosed.

Limitation of Alteryx

• Exporting your results to a different visualization program like Tableau or Microsoft Excel is not possible.

Pricing

Alteryx is a little expensive, with its designer package starting at $5195. However, they also provide a free one-month trial.

4. Stitch

G2 Rating: 4.4
Gartner Rating: 4.5
Stitch is an open-source ETL service that connects various data sources and replicates the data into preferred destinations.

Key Features of Stitch

• It is relatively easy to use as no coding knowledge is required to move data from sources to destinations in Stitch. 
• It has an excellent user interface and a friendly GUI and is fast. 

Limitation of Stitch

• In contrast to the other ETL tools, Stitch does not allow you to select a ready-made dashboard; instead, it requires you to integrate your data into one of the open data warehouses you choose as a destination. 
• It is also challenging to navigate through the inventories.

Pricing

Stitch is comparatively cheaper than AWS Glue, especially for smaller organizations, as they can choose from a range of prices. Depending on your needs, Stitch offers pricing plans starting from $100 up to $1250.

5. Matillion

G2 Rating: 4.4
Gartner Rating: 4.2
Matillion offers cloud-native platforms that concentrate on ELT operations and data analytics service offerings. Matillion’s platforms are hosted in the cloud. 

Key Features of Matillion

• If you are looking for an alternative to AWS Glue, you should consider Matillion because its learning curve is more manageable.
• It is built to support various data warehouses, such as Snowflake and BigQuery, and provides automatic scaling in environments containing clusters. 
• Since it is an ELT platform, every data transformation must occur within the data warehouse itself. Hence, you can load data quickly.

Limitation of Stitch

• Although low-code and no-code options are available for building data pipelines, becoming proficient in using this ELT platform takes time and effort. 

Pricing

Pricing can shift significantly because you are charged based on the number of users utilizing the platform and the number of projects saved. Pricing is available in the form of Credits, starting at $2.00 per credit. One Matillion-Credit is equivalent to one hour of use of the Virtual Core.

Tabular Differentiation of AWS Glue Alternatives 

Tools	Key Features	Deployment	Pricing	G2 Rating
AWS Glue	-Glue Data Catalog -Glue Studio -Glue ETL	AWS cloud	Pay-as-you-go, based on usage	4.2
Hevo	-Real-time data replication -Fault-tolerant architecture -Schema mapping	Cloud-based	Subscription-based, tiered	4.3
Informatica	-Data quality -Data governance -Master data management	Cloud, on-premises	Subscription-based, custom pricing	4.4
Alteryx	-Advanced analytics -Data blending -Spatial tools	On-premises, cloud	Subscription-based, tiered	4.6
Stitch	-Rapid data pipeline creation -Robust security	Cloud-based	Subscription-based, volume-based	4.4
Matillion	-ETL design -Orchestration -Transformation	Cloud-based	Subscription-based, tiered	4.4

Final Thoughts

The various alternatives to AWS Glue on the market serve multiple distinct functions, despite their shared resemblance. 

Some people may be looking for options that support traditional database queries, or a tool which doesn’t require prior Spark knowledge etc. in an AWS Glue alternative. There are alternatives available for each of these aspects of the situation.

We hope this article helped you find an alternative to AWS Glue that will meet all of your requirements. 

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AWS Glue Alternatives FAQs