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APIs · head to head

Convoy vs Meltano

Convoy logo

Convoy

APIs

Open source webhooks gateway you self-host, handling both sending and receiving

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Meltano logo

Meltano

Automation Integration

Open source ELT built on the Singer tap and target ecosystem, configured as code

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Convoy the default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.; Meltano the company behind Meltano wound down in December 2025 and the project was transferred to Matatika, a much smaller organisation, so roadmap velocity and the size of the maintenance team are now materially lower than the tool's reputation suggests.
  • They diverge on capability: Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Meltano covers Singer plugin management.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Convoy and Meltano actually diverge.

Attributes where Convoy and Meltano differ
AttributeConvoyMeltano
Pricing modelPer month, flat rate regardless of volumeOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, CloudLinux, macOS, Docker, Windows (via WSL)
CategoryAPIsAutomation Integration

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Convoy

  • Inbound and outbound
  • Broker-driven ingestion
  • Payload transformation
  • Portal links
  • Circuit breaking
  • Retry policies
  • OpenTelemetry export
  • Role-based access control

Only in Meltano

  • Singer plugin management
  • Project as code
  • Environments
  • Incremental state
  • dbt integration
  • Custom taps
  • Orchestrator hooks
  • Container deployment

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Convoy

  • A fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party SaaS for compliance reasonsnot Meltano
  • A high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licencenot Meltano
  • A team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gatewaynot Meltano
  • An engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing Kafka or SQS topicnot Meltano

Meltano

  • A data team that wants to stop paying per-row connector fees on high-volume sources they can extract themselvesnot Convoy
  • Loading from an API that no commercial ELT vendor supports, by writing a tap with the Meltano SDKnot Convoy
  • Keeping pipeline configuration in the same Git repository and review process as the rest of the platform codenot Convoy
  • A regulated environment where extraction must run inside your own network with no data passing through a vendornot Convoy

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Convoy

  • The default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.
  • Frain Technologies is a small startup, and putting customer-facing delivery infrastructure on it means accepting real vendor continuity risk on a component that is hard to swap out quickly.
  • The premium tier at a flat 999 US dollars a month is poor value below substantial volume, while the community edition omits the portal, transformations and RBAC that most production deployments end up wanting.
  • The hosted cloud trial is capped at one project and 100 events a day, which is too small to properly evaluate the service before committing.
  • Documentation and the third-party ecosystem are thinner than the established webhook services, so unusual configurations often mean reading the Go source.

Meltano

  • The company behind Meltano wound down in December 2025 and the project was transferred to Matatika, a much smaller organisation, so roadmap velocity and the size of the maintenance team are now materially lower than the tool's reputation suggests.
  • Singer connector quality varies enormously; a tap may be maintained, abandoned, or maintained only for the subset of endpoints its original author needed, and you will not know which until a schema change breaks a load at 3am.
  • There is no managed hosting from the project itself, so someone on your team owns scheduling, secrets, retries, alerting and upgrades, which is real headcount that a per-row SaaS bill was buying for you.
  • It is command-line and YAML first with no meaningful web interface, so analysts who are not comfortable in Git and a terminal cannot maintain pipelines themselves.
  • Debugging spans three layers, the tap, Meltano itself and the target, and each has its own logging conventions, so failures often require reading Python source in a third-party connector.

Pricing, plan by plan

Convoy

Free
  • CommunityFree
    • Self-hosted open source gateway
    • Inbound and outbound webhooks
    • Automatic retries and message broker support
  • Premium$999/month
    • Flat rate irrespective of message volume
    • Portal links and payload transformation
    • RBAC, circuit breaking and white labelling
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • SAML SSO
    • Dedicated support with SLA
    • On-premises deployment assistance
  • Cloud$undefined/month
    • Hosted by Convoy
    • 14 day trial limited to one project and 100 events a day
    • Usage-based tiers above the trial

Meltano

Free
  • MeltanoFree
    • MIT licensed, self-hosted
    • No paid Meltano Cloud tier; it was retired before the company wound down
    • Community support via Slack and GitHub

Which should you pick?

Choose Convoy if

  • You need inbound and outbound.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
  • You also want broker-driven ingestion.
Convoy review

Choose Meltano if

  • You need singer plugin management.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Windows (via WSL).
  • You also want project as code.
Meltano review

Questions people ask

Is Convoy or Meltano better?
Neither clearly leads. Convoy starts at Free and Meltano at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Convoy or Meltano?
Convoy starts at Free and Meltano at Free.
Does Convoy or Meltano run on more platforms?
Convoy runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud. Meltano runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Windows (via WSL).
Can I use Convoy for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Convoy best used for?
Convoy is most often used for a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons, a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence, a team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gateway, an engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing kafka or sqs topic. Of those, a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons and a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence are not what Meltano is typically brought in for.
What can Convoy do that Meltano cannot?
Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Broker-driven ingestion, Payload transformation, Portal links. Meltano covers Singer plugin management, Project as code, Environments, Incremental state.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Convoy: Is Convoy really open source?

Yes, the community edition is open source and self-hostable, covering both inbound and outbound webhooks with retries.

Meltano: Is Meltano still maintained after the company shut down?

Yes. Arch, formerly Meltano, was acquired by Matatika in December 2025 and the open source project continues under their stewardship, with releases through 2026.

Convoy: What does premium cost?

A flat 999 US dollars a month, self-hosted, regardless of message volume.

Meltano: Is there a hosted Meltano?

Not from the project. Meltano Cloud was retired, and hosting now comes from Matatika or from running the container yourself.

Convoy: Does it receive webhooks as well as send them?

Yes, inbound ingestion with verification and deduplication is a first-class feature, unlike most webhook services.

Meltano: How does it compare on cost with Fivetran?

Meltano has no licence fee, so the comparison is your engineering time versus Fivetran's per-monthly-active-row billing. High-volume, low-complexity sources favour Meltano; long tails of fiddly SaaS APIs favour Fivetran.

Convoy: Do I have to self-host?

No, there is a hosted cloud, but the trial is capped at 100 events a day and self-hosting is the primary model.

Meltano: Can I use Airbyte connectors with it?

Yes, Meltano can run Airbyte source connectors through a bridge, which widens the connector pool beyond Singer taps.

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