Another open-source tool is Meltano, which is based on Singer. Meltano is a lab from Gitlab trying to fix some of Singer’s shortcomings.
The following aspects about Meltano make it different from Airbyte:
- Outdated connectors: Meltano is limited by Singer’s own outdated connectors.
- Standardization: Meltano uses Singer’s approach of turning each connector into an open-source project, which makes standardization and quality enforcement difficult. Airbyte, on the other hand, has a mono-repo in order to ensure standardization and ease of maintenance across all the connectors developed.
- Interface: Meltano is a CLI-first product, while Airbyte offers a UI and has an API-first approach.
- Replication Capabilities: Airbyte supports log-based Change Data Capture (CDC) for your data replication needs and supports data lakes as destination connectors.
- Speed of Execution: Meltano is only maintained by a handful of maintainers and as a Gitlab lab, might limit its scope to what is interesting to Gitlab. Airbyte is venture-funded and has a growing team.
- Community: Airbyte has an active contributor community that is growing significantly faster than Meltano’s.
