Top 5 Amazon S3 ETL Tools For 2025

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services that collects data from anywhere on the internet. In today's data-driven world, businesses rely heavily on seamless data integration and transformation processes to unlock the full potential of their vast data resources. But what happens if you want to move data from Amazon S3 to a data warehouse for analysis?

This is where ETL tools come to the rescue, simplifying the entire process, empowering organizations to efficiently collect, process, and integrate their data. Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools transfer Amazon S3 data to a supported warehouse through big data pipelines, letting you generate insights about your organization through business intelligence tools. This post features the five best ETL tools for this use case based on features, capabilities, user review scores, and prices. 

Here are our 5 key takeaways about Amazon S3 ETL Tools:

• ETL tools offer benefits such as eliminating complex data pipelines and reducing the need for expensive data engineers when moving Amazon S3 data to a warehouse.
• Best practices for using ETL tools include planning ETL workloads, testing ETL pipelines before deployment, and considering integration capabilities with other data sources beyond Amazon S3.
• Integrate.io, Talend, Stitch, AWS Glue, and Fivetran are all notable Amazon S3 ETL tools with varying features, capabilities, and pricing structures.
• Integrate.io offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, 300+ pre-built data connectors, excellent customer support, and scalability while Talend provides a vast range of connectors but is known for its complexity. 
• On the other hand, Stitch focuses on transformation in the target system. AWS Glue integrates well with other AWS services but has a learning curve, and Fivetran excels in quickly moving data to a warehouse but requires SQL knowledge and performs transformations in the target destination.

In this article, we will further explore these five Amazon S3 ETL tools based on features, capabilities, user review scores, and prices. These tools have offerings such as intuitive interfaces, robust features, and seamless integration capabilities, helping businesses overcome complex data challenges while maximizing the potential of their Amazon S3 storage infrastructure.

What are the benefits of using ETL tools? 

ETL tools prevent the need for complex data pipelines when moving Amazon S3 data to a warehouse, so you don't have to hire an expensive data engineer. 

Does Amazon have an ETL tool?

Amazon Glue is an ETL tool that helps you move Amazon S3 data to multiple destinations. 

What are the Best Practices for Using ETL Tools?

Before you learn the best five best Amazon S3 ETL tools, here are some tips and best practices for using these platforms:

Plan your ETL workloads

Even though tools automate much of the ETL process, you'll still need to plan your ETL workloads by determining rules for data integration. Understanding how Amazon S3 integrates with different destination systems, including data warehouses like BigQuery, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, and Apache Hive, will result in more successful outcomes.

Test ETL pipelines

Before moving data from Amazon S3 to a warehouse for real, test your ETL pipelines to ensure they work correctly. You'll identify any bottlenecks that might prevent the smooth flow of data from Amazon's storage system to your target destination. 

Think about other data integration tasks

It's unlikely Amazon S3 is the only data source in your organization. When choosing ETL tools, find out whether they move data from other popular systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, or your specific customer relationship management (CRM) system. That will improve data integration across your organization. Integrate.io, for example, has pre-built connectors for more than 200 data sources, including CRMs, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, transactional databases, relational databases, data stores, SaaS tools, and more.

What are the Top ETL Solutions for Managing Amazon S3 Data Pipelines?

Integrate.io, AWS Glue, and Fivetran are top ETL solutions for managing Amazon S3 data pipelines. Integrate.io offers native S3 integration with easy drag-and-drop pipelines to extract, transform, and load data across cloud warehouses like Snowflake, Redshift, and BigQuery. It supports batch and incremental loads, complex transformations, and automated scheduling, making it ideal for teams needing quick, secure, and code-free data pipeline setups with Amazon S3.

Now learn about the five best Amazon S3 ETL tools:

1. Integrate.io 

Price: Fixed fee, unlimited usage model. Discover why Integrate.io is among the top ETL solutions for managing Amazon S3 data pipelines with a  14-day free trial? You can also schedule an ETL trial set-up meeting to speak with an Integrate.io specialist.

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.3/5 (G2)

Users praise Integrate.io as a leading ETL solution for Amazon S3 data pipelines, highlighting its "user-friendly" and "intuitive" interface and "excellent support," according to verified reviewers on G2. The platform is recognized as one of G2's Top 50 Infrastructure Products for 2023.

Key features: 

• Use S3 as a data source and destination
• 200+ pre-built data connectors
• Drag-and-drop interface
• Field-level encryption security
• Excellent customer support
• Scales to your business needs
• REST API code automation

Integrate.io seamlessly connects Amazon S3 data to a supported data warehouse, creating a unified data source. This process is expedited with the platform's pre-built native Amazon S3 connector, allowing data to flow into business intelligence tools like Looker, Tableau, and Microsoft Power BI.

Pros:

• Integrate.io stands out as the top ETL solution for Amazon S3 data pipelines due to its straightforward drag-and-drop functionality, enabling users of all skill levels to leverage the platform.
• It also allows for custom alerts and notifications for any issues in your S3 pipelines, facilitating quick responses.
• The platform offers robust security, data governance, and scalability to accommodate growing cloud data needs.

Cons:

• Pricing is tailored for mid-market and Enterprise, with no entry-level pricing for SMBs.

2. Talend 

Price: Unknown (It's also difficult to compare Data Fabric with Integrate.io because the former doesn't publish its prices online. )

Tool type: Cloud-based/on-premises

Customer rating: 4.4/5

Key features:

• 1,000+ data connectors
• Batch loading and real-time loading
• API creation

Pros:

• This on-prem and cloud-based ETL tool is more than capable of extracting datasets from S3, transforming them, and loading them into a supported destination in a quick timeframe.
• Other benefits include scheduled alerts that warn you when S3 integration jobs experience issues and full data governance management, helping you comply with frameworks in your region and industry when moving data between locations. 

Cons:

Talend has more overall data connectors than Integrate.io, but this platform is notoriously difficult to use. That means it might not be a good fit for those who want to move Amazon S3 data to a warehouse with limited data integration experience. In fact, you might need to hire a data engineer with Talend certification to create the pipelines required for S3 integration.

3. Stitch

Price: From $100/month, but you'll need to upgrade to a paid-for plan (from $1,250/month) for S3 ETL workloads

Tool type: Open-source, cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.5/5

Features:

• 130 data connectors
• Real-time alerts
• Good customer service
• Advanced monitoring for high volumes of data

Like Integrate.io, you can use Amazon S3 as both a source and a destination with Stitch's data transformation connector.

Pros: 

• Easy-to-use interface with fast onboarding and connector setup.

• Automates data extraction, loading, and schema updates.

• Handles growing data volumes without manual scaling.

Cons: 

• However, Stitch reverses the "transform" and "load" parts of the ETL process. Transformations take place in the target system, whether that's S3 or a data warehouse. That can make it tricky to comply with data governance frameworks because you'd have moved data to a new system before removing inaccuracies. Stitch also has fewer data connectors (around 130) than Amazon S3 ETL tools like Integrate.io and Talend. 
• Stitch is an open-source platform at its heart, but you'll need to upgrade to a paid-for plan to properly execute S3 pipelines. With plans starting from $1,250 per month, they are the same cost as Integrate.io (from $15,000 per year). 

4. AWS Glue

Price: Glue has a complicated pricing structure where you pay an hourly rate based on your data requirements

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.2/5

Features:

• Integrates well with other AWS systems
• Serverless
• Scales well

AWS Glue is an ETL tool that moves S3 workloads to different destinations in the AWS services ecosystem, including Redshift.

Pros: 

• Glue transfers S3 data to the destination of your choice seamlessly, making ETL less of a chore. 
• It also has features like job scheduling, providing more control over your data integration projects. Glue’s cloud platform is serverless, meaning you don't have to manually dedicate a server to execute it. That removes the need to scale or manage the infrastructure required for S3 ETL. 

Cons:

• You might think Glue is more capable of executing S3 jobs because it belongs to the same company, but that's not the case. This platform can be difficult to navigate if users don't have experience with AWS products. Also, Glue only really integrates with other AWS systems and apps. That means you won't find connectors for Salesforce, HubSpot, or other sources and destinations like you would with Integrate.io. 

5. Fivetran

Price: Unknown (contact a rep for prices)

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.2/5

Features:

• 100+ data connectors
• Data security and privacy
• Logging and reporting

Pros: 

• Fivetran makes this list of Amazon S3 ETL tools because of its ability to quickly move S3 buckets to a warehouse of your choice, helping you generate insights from your data. It also offers enhanced security and logging and reporting features. However, like Stitch, Fivetran reverses the "T" and "L" in ETL and performs transformations in the target destination, potentially resulting in data governance issues. 

Cons:

• Fivetran also has a user interface with a steep learning curve. You'll need to know SQL to create data pipelines for a data source like S3, making this platform unusable for some businesses. Integrate.io, on the other hand, lets you extract data and move it between locations without code. 

Comparison of Top S3 ETL Tools

How Integrate.io Can Help With Amazon S3 ETL

All the tools above move ETL data from Amazon S3 to a target destination. However, Integrate.io is the No.1 platform for this process because of its drag-and-drop capabilities, ease of use, custom alerts, security, and scalability. 

Moving real-time data from Amazon S3 to a data warehouse through ETL jobs is simple. Integrate.io's connector extracts data from S3 and places it inside a staging area before it transforms data into the most appropriate format for analysis. This ETL solution will also remove inaccuracies and ensure compliance with data governance regulations before loading it into a warehouse like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake. You can even use S3 as a data destination and move data from Salesforce and other systems into the platform. 

With Integrate.io's Amazon S3 ETL tools, you can:

• Perform ReverseETL, ELT (extract, load, transform), and CDC (change data capture/data replication). Unifying data every 60 seconds in a single source of truth, Integrate.io is the industry's fastest ELT platform. Set up an ELT trial. 
• Create secure and self-hosted REST APIs for data products with Integrate.io's API management.
• Improve data management, data quality, data migration, data warehousing, data analytics, data catalogs, and make your business a more data-driven one.

Integrate.io is the no-code data pipeline platform that ETLs data from Amazon S3 to a central repository. Sign up for a 14-day free trial or schedule an intro call with an expert to identify pain points in your data integration projects and get instant solutions one-on-one. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which are the best ETL tools for transforming data in Amazon S3?

Top ETL tools for transforming data in Amazon S3 include AWS Glue with serverless data transformation, Integrate.io for low-code S3 pipelines with flexibility through Python transformations, Apache Spark on EMR for large-scale transformations, Matillion with S3 staging and ELT workflows, Hevo Data for no-code S3 transformations, and Fivetran with S3 connectors for automated data flow into warehouses.

Q: Why should I use S3 as a destination in my ETL pipeline?

Amazon S3 offers cheap, scalable, and secure storage, making it ideal for centralizing raw or processed data. ETL pipelines can land data in S3 for downstream use cases like analytics, machine learning, and archival, while benefiting from S3’s flexibility in storing structured or unstructured data.

Q: How do S3 ETL pipelines help with analytics?

S3 can serve as a low-cost data lake layer. ETL pipelines prepare and store data in analytics-friendly formats like Parquet or ORC, enabling faster queries through services like Athena, Redshift Spectrum, and Databricks, without needing to load data into traditional databases.