Canal vs Google Cloud Datastream
Canal
github.com
Google Cloud Datastream
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Canal | Google Cloud Datastream |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.40/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Change Data Capture Software | 8.7 (#3) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Administration | Canal Admin provides web based dynamic management, including online configuration, task, and log operations. | Datastream can be administered through the Google Cloud console, Google Cloud CLI, and REST API. |
| Purpose | Canal parses MySQL database incremental logs and provides incremental data subscription and consumption. | Datastream is a serverless change data capture and replication service for synchronizing data with minimal latency. |
| Use cases | Listed uses include database mirroring, real-time database backup, index building and maintenance, business cache refresh, and incremental data processing. | Google identifies analytics, database replication, migration, synchronization, and event-driven architectures as Datastream use cases. |
Plans
Google Cloud Datastream
- Datastream Free TierFree
- Datastream backfill$0.40 a month
- Datastream CDC$2 a month
In their own words
Canal
Canal is a free, self-hosted project that parses MySQL binary logs so applications can subscribe to and consume database changes incrementally. It acts like a MySQL replica, requesting binlog data from a master and parsing the events. Listed uses include database mirroring and real-time backup, index maintenance, cache refresh, and business-logic processing. The README lists source versions MySQL 5.1.x, 5.5.x, 5.6.x, 5.7.x, and 8.0.x. Canal can send change records to Kafka and RocketMQ; the quick start also lists RabbitMQ and Pulsar server modes. Its Protocol Buffers 3.0 client-server design has clients for Java, C#, Go, and Python. Canal Admin provides a web interface for managing configuration, tasks, and logs, and the project lists native Prometheus monitoring. Docker images and a Docker QuickStart are available, but the default setup runs only one Canal instance per Docker instance. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0.
Google Cloud Datastream
Google Cloud Datastream is a serverless change data capture and replication service for synchronizing data. Streams can capture ongoing updates and backfill historical records, while the service scales automatically without resources for users to provision or manage. Supported destinations include BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Apache Iceberg tables. Documented sources include Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, AlloyDB, SQL Server, MongoDB, Spanner, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, and Microsoft Dataverse; some sources are marked as preview. Datastream can work with Dataflow templates to load data from Cloud Storage into destinations including BigQuery, Cloud SQL, and Spanner. Connectivity options include IP allowlisting, a forward SSH tunnel, and private connectivity over VPC peering. Processing is charged, idle streams incur no cost, and other Google Cloud resources are billed separately. The free tier includes 100 GiB of eligible CDC data per month per billing account. Events are delivered at least once, but ordering is not guaranteed. Datastream is administered through the Google Cloud console, CLI, or REST API.