Google Cloud Datastream vs Maxwell's Daemon
Google Cloud Datastream
cloud.google.comMaxwell's Daemon
maxwells-daemon.ioSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Datastream | Maxwell's Daemon |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.40/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Change Data Capture Software | 8.2 (#6) | 7.4 (#14) |
| Encryption | Buffered data is encrypted at rest, and replicated data is encrypted by default using destination security controls. | When enabled, Maxwell encrypts messages with AES/CBC/PKCS5PADDING using a user-provided key, then base64-encodes values. |
| Use cases | Google identifies analytics, database replication, migration, synchronization, and event-driven architectures as Datastream use cases. | The site lists ETL, database change auditing, cache building or expiring, search indexing, and inter-service communication as use cases. |
Plans
Google Cloud Datastream
- Datastream Free TierFree
- Datastream backfill$0.40 a month
- Datastream CDC$2 a month
In their own words
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.
Maxwell's Daemon
Maxwell's Daemon is a free, open-source, self-hosted Linux tool for moving MySQL changes into streaming systems. It reads MySQL binary logs and emits database changes as JSON for Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, SNS, NATS, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, BigQuery, RabbitMQ, Redis, and other destinations. Listed uses include ETL, database change auditing, cache building or expiration, search indexing, and communication between services. Filtering can select databases, tables, and column values, while JavaScript filters handle custom row filtering and data changes. When encryption is enabled, messages use AES/CBC/PKCS5PADDING with a user-provided key and base64-encoded values. Metrics can be exposed through logging, JMX, HTTP, or Datadog; HTTP endpoints cover metrics, Prometheus, health checks, ping, and diagnostics. Maxwell supports schema evolution and an initial snapshot. Deployment options include command line, Docker, binary distribution, and Homebrew. Requirements include JRE 11 or later, supported MySQL versions from 5.1 through 8, and Kafka 0.8.2 or later when Kafka is used.