CDC Tools With a Free Tier: What You Get Before You Pay

Estuary is the CDC tool to start on if you want a real pipeline running before you pay. Its free tier runs up to 10 GB a month across 2 connector instances with no credit card. Fivetran's free plan caps at 500,000 monthly active rows, Striim at 25 million events a month, and Materialize at 24 GiB of memory.

How We Selected These Free CDC Tools

Seven tools meet three buyer requirements.

1. An ongoing free option. The tool must offer either a recurring free allowance or a self-hosted edition that can run a pipeline without a software license fee. A time-limited trial alone does not qualify.
2. Clear costs and limits. For a free allowance, identify the published cap and what happens when you exceed it. For self-hosted software, identify any license limits and the costs the team covers itself.
3. Vendor-published numbers only. Allowances, caps, connector counts, and prices come from the vendor's own pages, checked in October 2026. A figure the vendor does not publish stays out of this article.

A standing allowance lets a team test the tool against its own sources for as long as the cap holds. A trial tests the setup, not the fit. These tools differ in what they meter. Every entry names the unit the vendor meters, because a cap only means something beside the unit it is counted in. Two of the seven count a resource as well as a volume: Estuary counts connector instances beside gigabytes, and Materialize counts memory and disk.

7 Best Free CDC Tools

Seven tools publish either a free allowance or a no-license-fee path. Estuary leads the list, and each entry states what the free tier gives, where it stops, and what starts charging. The entries run from managed services that meter gigabytes or rows to open-source software with no license fee.

1. Estuary

Estuary's pricing page lists a free tier. It moves up to 10 GB a month across 2 connector instances, with no credit card required. The allowance runs month after month, so a small pipeline can stay on the free tier without a payment method. Cross either limit and a 30-day free trial of the Cloud plan starts automatically. A third connector instance exceeds the cap and starts the same trial.

Past the trial, the Cloud plan costs $0.50 per GB plus $100 per connector instance a month, as of October 2026. The connector rate drops to $50 for each instance after your sixth. Estuary lists 200+ fully managed connectors. The free tier includes managed, real-time CDC from production databases such as Postgres, with updates reaching fast destinations in milliseconds. It requires no credit card and has no expiry as long as you stay within the free limits.

Data is metered twice on this model. It counts once when captured from a source and again when delivered to a destination, including data produced by transformations. Suppose a pipeline reads 100 GB from Postgres and writes it to Snowflake. Estuary counts 200 GB, because capture and delivery both count. If you capture 5 GB from one source and deliver the same 5 GB to one destination, you use the full 10 GB monthly allowance. It covers less once transformations sit in the path.

The free tier runs up to 10 GB a month across 2 connector instances as of October 2026. The goal is to prove the setup before a contract. Start with the source you care about most. Watch the meter for a month before you add a second destination, because delivery counts again.

Not ideal for: teams that need to move more than 10 GB a month and stay on a free plan. Crossing the cap starts a free 30-day Cloud trial. After that, continuing the pipeline requires a paid plan.

2. Fivetran

Fivetran's pricing page lists three free allowances on the Free plan. Connections are free up to 500,000 monthly active rows, activations up to 3,500, and transformations up to 5,000 monthly model runs. Connections and activations are counted in the same unit, monthly active rows, while transformations are counted in model runs.

The $5 base charge on standard connections does not apply on the Free plan, as of October 2026. Each new connection also comes with a 14-day free trial.

Connections, transformations, and activations all sit under one consolidated usage-based plan.

Not ideal for: a source whose monthly active rows climb past 500,000, because the Free plan's connection allowance stops there.

3. Airbyte Core (self-hosted)

Airbyte Core is free to self-host. You pay for the infrastructure and the engineering time to run and maintain it. Airbyte Cloud offers a trial rather than an ongoing free tier.

Airbyte supports log-based change data capture from Postgres, MySQL, and SQL Server.

Not ideal for: teams that need an ongoing free service managed by the vendor and don’t want to host and maintain Airbyte themselves.

4. Confluent

Confluent's pricing page lists a Basic tier starting at $0 a month, as of October 2026. Basic includes 80+ fully managed connectors. On that tier the first eCKU is free, so the free starting point is one unit of compute.

Not ideal for: teams wanting a free tier without the eCKU pricing model, since the first eCKU is the free unit.

5. Striim

Striim's pricing page lists a free Developer tier capped at up to 25 million events a month. It includes trial access to all premium, standard, and 200+ preview application connectors.

The 25 million events are the tier's own cap, while the connector access is a trial.

Not ideal for: production pipelines or development workloads that exceed 25 million events a month.

6. Debezium

Debezium's site describes an open source distributed platform for change data capture. It is 100% Apache 2.0 licensed. The project ships 18 source connectors and 25 sink connectors, so it ships more sinks than sources. The same connectors and change events run on several runtimes. The latest stable release is dated September 2026.

Not ideal for: teams without the engineering time to run, monitor, and maintain their own CDC infrastructure.

7. Materialize

Materialize's pricing page lists a self-managed Community License that is free forever within limits of 24 GiB of memory and 48 GiB of disk.

The fully managed path is Cloud On-Demand, which bills $1.50 per compute credit, as of October 2026. The two paths meter different things: the license meters memory and disk, and the cloud meters compute credits. A team that wants the free tier keeps the cluster small and runs it itself.

Not ideal for: a team that wants the free path managed, since the free tier is the self-managed Community License.

Free CDC Tools Comparison: Limits and Pricing

The table gives the free allowance, where it stops, and what starts charging for each tool. Each vendor meters differently: Estuary in gigabytes, Fivetran in monthly active rows, Striim in events.

The unit each tool meters is the one to match against your own volume. Those units are GB a month, monthly active rows, events a month, or compute credits. Two rows count a resource as well as a volume: Estuary counts connector instances beside gigabytes, and Materialize counts memory and disk.

How to Choose the Right Free CDC Tool

The free tier you pick should match the unit the tool meters, because the caps are not comparable across vendors. Estuary meters GB a month, Fivetran meters monthly active rows, and Striim meters events a month. For an insert-heavy table, suppose each new row has a distinct key, averages 1 KB, and is synced just once that month. Using decimal units, 5 GB of captured data works out to about 5 million new rows. Delivering those rows to one destination adds another 5 GB, using Estuary’s full 10 GB allowance. That’s roughly 10 times the number of new rows covered by Fivetran’s free allowance of 500,000 monthly active rows (MAR) in this example.

Compare the overflow price, not the allowance. The overflow prices differ. Estuary's Cloud plan charges $0.50 per GB, counted on capture and again on delivery, as of October 2026. It adds $100 per connector instance a month, dropping to $50 after the sixth. Materialize Cloud On-Demand charges $1.50 per compute credit. Fivetran prices its three products under one usage-based plan.

Price the same volume on the paid plan before you commit. Run a month on the free tier, note the volume you moved, and estimate that volume on Estuary's Cloud rates or Fivetran's usage-based plan. The free tier tells you whether the tool fits your sources. The paid estimate tells you whether it fits your budget.

Pick open source when you have engineers and no license budget. Debezium is 100% Apache 2.0 licensed. Unlike Estuary’s managed free tier, Debezium requires your team to run and maintain Kafka and Kafka Connect, or to operate Debezium Server yourself.

Measure before you commit. Run the tool against one source for a month, then read the meter the vendor reports. The units do not convert: 10 GB a month, 500,000 monthly active rows, and 25 million events a month each measure something different.

FAQ

These answers cover the questions teams ask when they compare free tiers.

Is Debezium free to use?

Debezium is 100% Apache 2.0 licensed. It is an open source distributed platform for change data capture, and the project ships 18 source connectors and 25 sink connectors. The same connectors and change events run on several runtimes, and the latest stable release is dated September 2026.

What does Fivetran's free plan include?

Fivetran's Free plan is free up to 500,000 monthly active rows for connections and 3,500 for activations. Transformations are free up to 5,000 monthly model runs, as of October 2026. The $5 base charge on standard connections does not apply on the Free plan, which Fivetran says remains entirely free. Each new connection also comes with a 14-day free trial, and connections, transformations, and activations all sit under one usage-based plan.

Does Airbyte have a free tier?

Airbyte Core is free to self-host, but you cover hosting and maintenance. Airbyte Cloud offers a 14-day trial rather than an ongoing free tier. That software supports log-based change data capture from Postgres, MySQL, and SQL Server.

Is Confluent Cloud free to start?

Yes. Confluent Cloud's Basic tier is listed starting at $0 a month, as of October 2026. The first eCKU on the Basic tier is free, so the free starting point is one unit of compute. Confluent Cloud includes 80+ fully managed connectors.

What happens when you exceed a CDC tool's free tier?

It depends on the vendor. Estuary starts a 30-day free trial of the Cloud plan automatically when you pass 10 GB a month. Fivetran gives each new connection a 14-day free trial. Check the overflow price before you cross the cap, because that is what the first invoice charges. The cap tells you when you start paying, and the overflow rate tells you how much.