Decodable vs pgstream

Decodable is a managed, serverless platform for real-time ETL, ELT, and stream processing, built on Apache Flink and Debezium. It lets teams create pipelines in SQL, Java, or Python and manage them through a UI, CLI, APIs, or dbt. SQL supports transformations, filtering, stateful joins, and complex event processing. Pipelines process data exactly once by default and can resume after a stop or failure. Connectors include Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, Apache Iceberg, and Snowflake, with Debezium-powered change data capture. Teams can use Decodable-hosted infrastructure or a Bring Your Own Cloud deployment. The free plan costs nothing and does not expire or require a credit card; it includes 24 hours or 10GiB of stream retention, 20 streams, and four running tasks. On Demand costs $0.12 a month, billed monthly, and Enterprise costs $0.10 a year, billed annually with committed capacity. Decodable is available via API, web, and self-hosted deployment.

pgstream is a free, open-source tool for moving PostgreSQL data and schema changes to other systems. Run it as a command-line program or embed it as a Go library; it is self-hosted and requires PostgreSQL. Destinations include PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, Kafka, and webhooks. It can take an initial or on-demand snapshot for bulk loads and point-in-time copies, and tracks schema changes so receiving systems can reflect table updates. During replication, column values can be transformed with greenmask, neosync, go-masker, or custom transformers, including to mask production data headed for development or staging. Kafka support includes schema-based partitioning. Installation options include a Go binary, building from source, and Homebrew on macOS or Linux. The project uses the Apache License 2.0 and costs nothing. Its initial release has constraints: one Kafka topic, the wal2json PostgreSQL plugin, no row-level filtering, and a primary-key or unique non-null column requirement. Community questions and issues go through GitHub issues.