Most businesses have data stored in a variety of locations, from in-house databases to SaaS platforms. To get a full picture of their finances and operations, they pull data from all those sources into a data warehouse or data lake and run analytics against it. But they don't want to build and maintain their own data pipelines.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to code everything in-house. Here's an comparison of two such tools, head to head.

About Google Cloud Dataprep

Google Cloud Dataprep is a data service for exploring, cleaning, and preparing structured and unstructured data. It's one of several Google data analytics services, including:

Stitch and Talend partner with Google. While this page details our products that have some overlapping functionality and the differences between them, we're more complementary than we are competitive. Google offers lots of products beyond those mentioned here, and we have thousands of customers who successfully use our solutions together.

About Elastic Logstash

Elastic is the corporate name of the company behind Elasticsearch. Logstash is a command-line tool that runs under Linux or macOS or in a Docker container. It integrates log data into the Elasticsearch search and analytics service. Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana make up the company's ELK Stack.

About Stitch

Stitch Data Loader is a cloud-based platform for ETL — extract, transform, and load. More than 3,000 companies use Stitch to move billions of records every day from SaaS applications and databases into data warehouses and data lakes, where it can be analyzed with BI tools. Stitch is a Talend company and is part of the Talend Data Fabric.

Google Cloud Dataprep LogoElastic Logstash LogoStitch Logo
FocusData transformationLog replication and managementData ingestion, ELT
Database replicationNoneNoneFull table; incremental via change data capture or SELECT/replication keys
SaaS sourcesNoneNoneMore than 100
Ability for customers to add new data sourcesNoYesYes
Connects to data warehouses? Data lakes?Yes / YesYes / YesYes / Yes
Transparent pricingYesYesYes
G2 customer satisfactionHelp4.1/54/54.8/5
Support SLAsYesNoAvailable
Purchase processSelf-serviceAvailable as a free download. Also bundled as part of the Elastic Stack, which is available via subscriptionOptions for self-service or talking with sales. Also available from the AWS store.
Compliance, governance, and security certificationsHIPAAGDPR, SOC 2 Type 2HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2
Data sharingYesNoYes, through Talend Data Fabric
Vendor lock-inMonth to monthLogstash is open source software shipped under the Elastic licenseMonth to month or annual contracts. Open source integrations
Developer toolsREST API for creating job groupsFour monitoring APIs, instructions for writing plugins in JavaImport API, Stitch Connect API for integrating Stitch with other platforms, Singer open source project

Let's dive into some of the details of each platform.

Transformations

Google Cloud Dataprep

Cloud Dataprep's main purpose is to let data analysts explore, clean, and prepare data for analysis. It provides tools to format, filter, and run macros against data. It uses a visual interface to cleanse and enrich multiple data sources before loading them to a Google Cloud Storage data lake or BigQuery data warehouse.

Elastic Logstash

Logstash provides plugins for several kinds of transformations, including filtering and deserializing data, extracting fields, and enriching data with lookups. Filters are text files, and users can edit existing filters and write their own; Logstash filters are Ruby gems.

Stitch

Stitch is an ELT product. Within the pipeline, Stitch does only transformations that are required for compatibility with the destination, such as translating data types or denesting data when relevant. Stitch is part of Talend, which also provides tools for transforming data either within the data warehouse or via external processing engines such as Spark and MapReduce. Transformations can be defined in SQL, Python, Java, or via graphical user interface.

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Connectors: Data sources and destinations

Each of these tools supports a variety of data sources and destinations.

Google Cloud Dataprep

Cloud Dataprep is a whitelabeled, managed version of Trifacta Wrangler. It can read data from Google Cloud Storage and BigQuery, and can import files. Cloud Dataprep doesn't support any SaaS data sources. It can write data to Google Cloud Storage or BigQuery.

Elastic Logstash

Logstash supports more than 50 log and event data sources. Destinations include Google BigQuery data warehouse, Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 data lakes, Elasticsearch, and more than 50 other file formats and operational monitoring platforms.

Stitch

Stitch supports more than 100 database and SaaS integrationsas data sources, and eight data warehouse and data lake destinations. Customers can contract with Stitch to build new sources, and anyone can add a new source to Stitch by developing it according to the standards laid out in Singer, an open source toolkit for writing scripts that move data. Singer integrations can be run independently, regardless of whether the user is a Stitch customer. Running Singer integrations on Stitch’s platform allows users to take advantage of Stitch's monitoring, scheduling, credential management, and autoscaling features.

Support, documentation, and training

Data integration tools can be complex, so vendors offer several ways to help their customers. Online documentation is the first resource users often turn to, and support teams can answer questions that aren't covered in the docs. Vendors of the more complicated tools may also offer training services.

Google Cloud Dataprep

Google provides several support plans for Google Cloud Platform, which Cloud Dataprep is part of. Documentation is comprehensive. Google offers both digital and in-person training.

Elastic Logstash

Logstash vendor Elasticsearch provides support through a customer-only portal. Logstash is also supported through an open source community. Documentation is comprehensive. Digital training materials are not available.

Stitch

Stitch provides in-app chat support to all customers, and phone support is available for Enterprise customers. Support SLAs are available. Documentation is comprehensive and is open source — anyone can contribute additions and improvements or repurpose the content. Stitch does not provide training services.

Pricing

Google Cloud Dataprep

Cloud Dataprep jobs are executed by Cloud Dataflow workers, which are priced per second for CPU, memory, and storage resources.

Elastic Logstash

Logstash is a free download, and is available bundled with other products in the Elastic Stack as a subscription, which starts at $16 per month. More expensive plans are available that feature things like dedicated support, custom plugins, machine learning, and advanced security features.

Stitch

Stitch has pricing that scales to fit a wide range of budgets and company sizes. All new users get an unlimited 14-day trial. Standard plans range from $100 to $1,250 per month depending on scale, with discounts for paying annually. Enterprise plans for larger organizations and mission-critical use cases can include custom features, data volumes, and service levels, and are priced individually.

Get started now

Which tool is better overall? That's something every organization has to decide based on its unique requirements, but we can help you get started. Sign up now for a free trial of Stitch.

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