Data management and integration are very important processes in any goal-driven organization. With quality data, your organization can make better decisions, monitor marketing ROI, understand customers’ behavior, and market trends.
In 2021, you shouldn’t be managing data manually. Several data automation tools are available which makes the process a lot easier. Among these are ETL tools.
ETL – Extract, Transform, Load – involves extracting data from varying sources and integrating them as one i.e, they make data work together.
For better results, you should go for only the best ones. So, I’ll show you the 15 best open-source ETL tools for 2021.
15 Best Open-Source ETL Tools 2021
1. Apache NiFi
Apache NiFi is a simple open-source ETL tool written in Java. You can use it to process and distribute data. The tool is reliable as it has high-level features for data transformation. Also, it supports system meditation logic and scalable data routing graphs.
With Apache NiFi, you won’t need to download or install any files. Plus, it has a friendly UI; everything you need for data designing, control, and monitoring is laid out within quick reach.
Apart from being open source, the Apache NiFi ETL software is highly configurable. You can modify the runtime of data flows, select high throughput or low latency, and guaranteed delivery or loss tolerance. Plus, it supports dynamic prioritization and backpressure.
This tool is suitable for data provenance. In fact, it ensures effective testing and rapid dataflow development.
Apache NiFi is a secure ETL tool as it supports policy management and internal authorization. Furthermore, data can be encrypted and the software supports HTTPS, SSH, and SSL during data transfer.
2. Jaspersoft ETL
Jaspersoft ETL is described as a ready-to-run ETL job designer. It’s a complete ETL tool with a range of data integration features. The tool allows you to accurately extract data from multiple locations into a single data store.
Notably, Jaspersoft ETL features a Job Designer tool for creating and editing ETL processes. Also, it features a Business Modeler tool that generates a non-technical view of the data flow.
With its Transformation Mapper functionality, you can define complex data transformations and mappings.
Data from databases, web services, FTP servers, POP servers, and XML files can be integrated with Jaspersoft ETL. You can input or output data from these sources simultaneously. When done, you can generate portable Java or Perl codes that’ll run on other platforms.
Jaspersoft ETL will also work with complex file formats and heterogeneous data sources e.g. LDIFs, CSVs, and RegExp. The tool features a real-time debugger that efficiently tracks your ETL statistics.
An advantage of using Jaspersoft ETL is that it can work very well with other ETL tools. Also, you get access to an Activity Monitoring Console; from there, you can keep track of your job events.
3. Apache Camel
Here’s another open-source ETL tool from the Apache Software Foundation. Apache Camel was developed as an integration framework to integrate different systems that consume or create data.
This tool is optimized to work with the majority of enterprise integration patterns. Notably, it’ll work with microservice architecture, Bobby Woolf, and Gregor Hohpe’s excellent book patterns. Apache Camel is recommended because it is portable and can be deployed anywhere.
You can use this open-source ETL tool as standalone software or integrate it with other platforms like Quarkus, Spring Boot, Application Servers, and cloud platforms. There are hundreds of components and APIs to help you integrate Apache Camel with anything. Other native integrations available include Kn, Kafka, and Karaf.
Apache Camel supports about 50 different data formats. Some of these formats include Any23, CBOR, Bindy, CSV, HL7, iCal, PGP, and RSS. Notably, the software supports the standard data formats of various industries including telecommunications, healthcare, and finance amongst others.
The Apache Camel open-source ETL tool can be downloaded and installed on macOS, Linux, and Windows systems. However, some of the projects are only available to particular operating systems.
4. KETL
Here is an XML-based open-source ETL tool. It works for the development and deployment of data from and to different platforms. KETL is fast and efficient and it helps you manage even the most complex data in minimal time.
This tool features a centralized respiratory so you can manage all data from a single location. It features a job execution and scheduling manager that executes varying data job types such as time-based scheduling, email notification, and conditional exception handling.
Since KETL is open source, you can include additional executors. With this ETL tool, you can extract and load data from/to multiple sources including flat file, relational, and XML data sources. It supports JDBC and proprietary database APIs.
In addition, KETL integrates with several security tools to keep your data safe. With the help of the performance monitor, you can follow up on your job history and active job statistics. The comprehensive analysis makes it easy for you to handle very problematic ETL jobs.
KETL will work on different servers and O/Ss no matter the volume of data you’re working with. The tool has native integration support for other data management tools.
5. CloverDX
Formerly known as CloverETL, CloverDX was the first open-source ETL tool. The software was upgraded from just handling ETL tasks to handling more enterprise data management tasks. Nevertheless, it is still a reliable tool.
The CloverDX tools that apply to ETL are CloverDX Designer and CloverDX Server. Using the designer, create ETL jobs from both internal and external data workflows. It has many built-in components that are configurable.
This open-source ETL tool is flexible as you can customize the components using any programming. However, Python and Java are the recommended programming languages to use. CloverDX allows you to package and share your ETL jobs anywhere as subgraphs. Similarly, you can save them as libraries to be reused.
With CloverDX, you can keep track of every ETL step you make. You get a complete overview of the data you’re working with and you can apply it to debug functions to easily locate data with issues.
Notably, CloverDX is reliable for team collaboration. While you control the data from a centralized location, you can assign and share tasks with others.
6. Apatar
Apatar is a relatively popular open-source ETL tool. The major functions of this tool are data migration and data integration. Apatar is popular and widely used because it’s easy.
The Apatar GUI is friendly and the environment is drag and drop. Hence, you only need to drag data from different applications and databases and drop them wherever you like.
The software will work with several databases including Oracle, MySQL, DB2, MS Access, PostgreSQL, XML, CSV, MS Excel, Salesforce.com, InstantDB, and JDBC amongst others. Apatar can be used to validate data and schedule data backups.
For each data job you carry out, the tool automatically creates a detailed report. Several other built-in tools can help improve data quality by de-duplication, cleansing, etc.
This software was completely written in Java and you can install it on Windows, Linux, and macOS. A community is available where you can source and share mapping schemas.
7. GeoKettle
This tool was modeled from the Pentaho Data Integration software. It’s a spatially enabled ETL tool for integrating data and creating geospatial data warehouses and databases. The tool is ideal for processing spatial data.
GeoKettle is a meta-driven ETL tool and is free and 100 percent open source. With this tool, you can extract data from multiple sources and transform its structure, eliminate errors, improve its standard, and generally clean up data.
Once done, the software allows you to load data to different database management systems, geospatial web services, and GIS files. Some supported databases include JDBC, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
The GeoKettle software is easy to use as you can automate data processing without the need for coding. However, due to its spatial nature, the tool is most recommended for developers and other advanced end-users.
It’s helpful for data conversion. A debugger is featured to help you locate any error caused during data transformation.
GeoKettle was mainly developed for Linux computers. Nevertheless, you can still run the tool on Windows and Mac computers via the web using an online emulator.
8. Talend
The Talend tool was developed to help businesses maintain clean, complete, and uncompromised data. It united data governance and integration. Several top companies like Cltl, Toyota, Domino’s, L’Oreal, and Bayer make use of this ETL tool.
An interesting feature with Talend is the Trust Assessor. This is a quick tool that’ll automatically scan your entire database to calculate your data quality. The output, Talend Trust Score, informs you if your data is reliable or not. This tool is very flexible as you can integrate any type of data.
Talend will work with any cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid database environment. It has native integration support for Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Spark, and more. Data pipelines you build using Talend can be run on any other data management platform.
Talend is an advanced open-source ETL tool as you can use it to build applications and APIs. Building these solutions is simple because you make use of visual tools. You can build JSON, AVRO, XML, B2B, and other complex integrations easily with Talend.
Furthermore, Talend makes collaboration with others easy and more productive. Although Talend has a premium version, you can avail its open-source version for free.
9. Scriptella
Number 9 on this list of best open source ETL tools is Scriptella.
It’s not just an ETL tool but also a script execution tool and it was programmed using Java. This tool was launched to make ETL automation simple to execute using data source scripting languages.
Scriptella mainly supports SQL, JavaScript, JEXL, and Velocity scripts amongst others. The tool handles database migration via LDAP, JDBC, and XML data sources amongst others. Furthermore, it supports cross-database ETL functions which means you can convert from one data file format to another.
This tool is one of the best open-source ETL tools out there as it performs efficiently but yet consumes very low CPU resources. Furthermore, it’s an Ant task and standalone tool; you don’t need to install it or deploy it to any server for it to work. You can run ETL files directly using Java codes.
With the transactional execution feature, Scriptella rolls back changes in ETL jobs if any issue is detected while running. Notably, the tool comes with built-in adapters for databases with ODBC and JDBC compliant drivers. Also, it’ll work for non-JDBC data sources via the service provider interface.
10. Singer
Singer is a cut-out feature from StitchData which is a Talend product. It’s described as a simple, composable, open-source ETL tool. The tool fosters communication between data extraction and data loading scripts. It’s reliable for sending data from one database, web API, file, or queue to another.
As a Unix-inspired software, anyone will find StichData’s Singer very easy to use. Furthermore, the tool is JSON-based which means it can be deployed via any programming language and it has native support for JSON Schema.
Singer natively supports data extraction from over 100 sources. This includes Amazon S3, Braintree, Codat, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Google Sheets, MySQL, SFTP, Salesforce, and iLevel amongst others. You can easily add any other source to the list.
Similarly, Singer natively supports data loading to 10 destinations. This includes Magento, Stitch, Data World, ReSci, PGSQL, Rakam, CSV, Google Sheets, Keboola, and Google Bigquery. Likewise, you can easily add other destinations. With this, Singer is one of the best in terms of integrations.
As a user, you can publicly contribute to the tool’s features via the Slack or GitHub community.
11. Informatica PowerCenter
PowerCenter from Informatica is an advanced open-source ETL tool for enterprise. It was developed for on-premises data integration initiatives such as app migration, data warehousing, and analytics.
This tool supports universal connectivity. You can integrate data from any type of data source using very powerful connectors. It also lets you transform data including very complex data formats like JSON, IoT, XML, and PDF. Furthermore, it’s a scalable tool you can use without worrying about downtime.
There are prebuilt transformations that make the ETL process a lot easier. You can always customize and reuse these transformations. PowerCenter supports rapid profiling and prototyping. Hence, the software is ideal for collaboration.
This open-source ETL tool enables you to keep track of your ETL processes. You can set alerts and you’ll be informed whenever any error is detected in the dataflow. In addition, you get real-time analytics data to work with.
Informatica PowerCenter supports cloud deployment. You can use this ETL tool via Microsoft Azure or AWS. Furthermore, there are other add-on packages to improve the software’s functionality.
12. Xplenty
At number 12 we have Xplenty. This is an advanced ETL tool that focuses on data regulation and security. The tool is used by several top companies from around the world.
Xplenty has all the features you need to create data pipelines. You can use the tool to deploy, monitor, schedule, maintain, and secure data. The tool will work for carrying out problematic data transformations or very simple data replication jobs. It has an intuitive GUI which is simple to use for implementing ETL and ELT.
As a no-code/low-code ETL tool, technical and non-technical users can utilize Xplenty. With the workflow engine, you can easily implement complex ETL data jobs. This tool allows you to connect with several third-party data repositories and SaaS applications.
Xplenty is a flexible and scalable ETL tool. It’s cloud-based so it doesn’t consume much system resources while running. An API is featured with which you can use to further customize the tool and also connect with more platforms.
Notably, Xplenty provides some of the best customer support. You can reach their support team via chat, phone, email, and online meetings.
13. HPCC Systems
HPCC Systems is an open-source ETL tool for complete, end-to-end data lake management. It was developed mainly to handle big data and it integrates data in a fast and easy way.
With this tool, you can manipulate data any way you want. It has loads of components for handling any ETL job in your data workflow. HPCC Systems utilizes Kubernetes automation in addition to its bare metal structure. Hence, it’ll work with mixed schema data lakes and other complex data sources.
This tool allows you to ingest data in real-time; it also supports batch and streaming data ingestion. It can be run as commodity hardware. Alternatively, you can deploy HPCC Systems on a cloud platform.
Furthermore, the HPCC Systems ETL tool comes with several built-in machine learning and data enhancement APIs.
HPCC systems partners/integrate with different third-party platforms; a notable example is CleanFunnel. With the CleanFunnel integration, you can better manage analytics data sources. As an open-source ETL tool, HPCC systems is free to use.
14. Jedox
Here we have an award-winning ETL tool. Jedox is an enterprise data management tool developed to streamline data planning processes. It’s more ideal for data ETL jobs in the financial industry/sector.
Jedox allows you to unite all data in one platform. It features a vast database which the developers describe as multidimensional. You can pull data from different sources automatically thanks to the latest in-memory computing technology that the tool features.
The software makes collecting analytics data and creating reports with them very simple. Notably, the software works more with Microsoft Excel. As an enterprise data ETL tool, Jedox is recommended for collaboration among different users.
An advantage with Jedox is that you can use the tool almost everywhere. It is available on the web, has a desktop and mobile application, and also an add-in for Microsoft Excel.
In addition, Jedox supports several add-ons, which are described as Models, and partner apps. The Models feature readymade templates for different data ETL jobs amongst others. You can access Jedox Models from the Jedox Marketplace and these Models are premium.
15. Airbyte
Airbyte was launched in 2020 which makes it the latest open-source ETL on this list. It features built-in connectors that are readily customizable. With these connectors, you can easily build data ETL pipelines and get them running in minutes.
With Airbyte, you can extract data from myriad sources. This is done using the prebuilt and custom connectors mentioned earlier. You can load data you extract to several destinations or a single destination via the Airbyte environment or other systems using the API.
There’s everything you need to synchronize and work with data from multiple sources. Furthermore, Airbyte is functional for data transformations. You can transform raw schema data to DBT and several other data formats. Airbyte has a full-grade scheduler you can use to orchestrate and schedule data automatically. It still supports Airflow and Kubernetes.
Airbyte self-hosts the data pipelines you create. Nothing goes to any third party which makes this tool very secure. Every activity during the data workflow is logged and you can set up monitors so you receive alerts if anything goes wrong.
Bottom Line
Your organization might need more functionality than the default features that come with some ETL tools. This is why an open-source ETL tool is ideal.
Being open source implies that you have access to the software code and you can customize or improve it to meet your business needs. You can go with any of the 15 best open-source ETL tools listed above.
