Weld alternative — Weld vs Skippr

Weld is SaaS ELT with SQL and dbt in the same workspace, plus reverse ETL back into tools like HubSpot and Salesforce. You pick connectors, land a warehouse, model, activate. Pricing is a subscription tied to Monthly Active Rows and a hard connector cap. Basic is $99 a month billed yearly for 5M MAR, two connectors, one user, daily syncs. Premium is $389 for six connectors and hourly syncs. Business is $959 for ten connectors and 15-minute syncs. Log-based CDC is Enterprise, or an add-on on Business.

Skippr is an open Streamhouse you run as one Rust binary. Write skippr.yml (or the same thing in Python), discover, sync. You query live state over Iceberg ∪ WAL, and the history is ordinary Iceberg in your bucket. No MAR tier. ELT into a warehouse is one path, not the product.

Feature	Skippr	Weld
Deploy	Single Rust binary, your VPC or on-prem	SaaS only. Enterprise can pick AWS, GCP, or Azure for their plane
Schema	In-stream evolution, sibling columns	Schema detection and self-healing in their UI
Storage	Open Iceberg on Parquet you own	Destination warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake, and similar)
CDC	Log-based; fails closed if the dest cannot honour	Log-based on Enterprise (Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB). Incremental on lower plans
Query	skipprd query on Iceberg ∪ WAL; history in any Iceberg engine	Warehouse after the load. SQL editor and dbt in Weld
Pricing	Free self-hosted engine	Subscription + MAR + connector caps. See their pricing.

Talk through skipprd now

Paul Bot knows the docs. Google Meet as soon as you join, any time of day.

Chat now →

Any time · 20 minutes · Google Meet now

What Weld is good at

One SaaS for ingest, SQL, dbt, and reverse ETL is the pitch, and it is a real product. Published prices, a 14-day trial, and a connector set aimed at growth-stage SaaS stacks. Reverse ETL is included instead of a second Census or Hightouch contract. If you want a predictable monthly number and you will stay inside the connector cap, that is easier to budget than Fivetran MAR with no ceiling.

Where the job is wider

The connector cap is a wall. Shopify plus ads plus Stripe plus Postgres fills Basic and then Premium. CDC, the thing you want for a live database, sits on Enterprise. On incremental syncs Weld counts a row each time it changes, so a chatty table still moves the MAR needle.

Weld is cloud-only. There is no binary in your VPC. Query is the warehouse after the load. There is no Iceberg ∪ WAL. Reverse ETL destinations are fewer than a specialist activation tool. If you need column-level grants or a self-hosted plane, Weld says so themselves: they are not that.

Skippr will not give you Weld's reverse ETL destinations or their mapper. If the job is "ingest plus HubSpot activation in one SaaS bill," Weld is the narrower tool. If the job is live SQL on Iceberg you run, Weld was never that.

Getting started

Install skipprd from the install guide, or pip install skippr. The three tabs write the same skippr.yml. Then discover, sync, and query.

YAML

skippr:
  workspace: analytics
  skipprd_el_storage_mode: local

pipelines:
  orders:
    data_source: data_sources.app_db
    data_sink: data_sinks.lake

data_sources:
  app_db:
    Postgres:
      host: db.internal
      user: skippr_reader
      password: ${APP_DB_PASSWORD}
      database: app
      tables: [orders, customers]
      cdc_mode: snapshot_then_cdc

data_sinks:
  lake:
    AthenaIceberg:
      warehouse: s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/
      glue_database_name: analytics
      athena_workgroup_name: primary
      athena_results_s3_bucket: my-athena-results
      region: us-east-1
    schema_sink: schema_sinks.lake_schema

schema_sinks:
  lake_schema:
    AthenaIceberg:
      warehouse: s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/
      glue_database_name: analytics
      athena_workgroup_name: primary
      athena_results_s3_bucket: my-athena-results
      region: us-east-1

CLI

skipprd --workspace analytics --storage-mode local connect data-source postgres \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name app_db \
  --host db.internal \
  --user skippr_reader \
  --password '${APP_DB_PASSWORD}' \
  --database app \
  --tables orders \
  --tables customers \
  --cdc-mode snapshot_then_cdc

skipprd connect data-sink athenaiceberg \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name lake \
  --warehouse s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/ \
  --glue-database-name analytics \
  --athena-workgroup-name primary \
  --athena-results-s3-bucket my-athena-results \
  --region us-east-1

skipprd connect schema-sink athenaiceberg \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name lake_schema

Python

from skippr import (
    Config,
    DataSinkAthenaIceberg,
    DataSourcePostgres,
    DataSourcePostgresSourceCdcMode,
    EnvRef,
    LocalStorage,
    Pipeline,
)

cfg = Config().workspace("analytics").storage(LocalStorage())

app_db = cfg.data_source(
    "app_db",
    DataSourcePostgres(
        host="db.internal",
        user="skippr_reader",
        password=EnvRef("APP_DB_PASSWORD"),
        database="app",
        tables=["orders", "customers"],
        cdc_mode=DataSourcePostgresSourceCdcMode.SNAPSHOTTHENCDC,
    ),
)

lake = cfg.data_sink(
    "lake",
    DataSinkAthenaIceberg(
        warehouse="s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/",
        glue_database_name="analytics",
        athena_workgroup_name="primary",
        athena_results_s3_bucket="my-athena-results",
        region="us-east-1",
    ),
    schema_sink="lake_schema",
)

cfg.pipeline("orders", Pipeline(data_source=app_db, data_sink=lake))
cfg.save("skippr.yml")

export APP_DB_PASSWORD='your-postgres-password'
skipprd discover --pipeline orders
skipprd sync --pipeline orders --once
skipprd query "SELECT count(*) FROM analytics.orders"

Which to choose

Choose Weld if you want ingest, SQL, and reverse ETL in one SaaS subscription, you fit the connector cap, and CDC can wait for Enterprise.

Choose Skippr if you want one binary, no MAR tier, live SQL, and Iceberg files that stay yours.

Install from Install. Connector and query reference live in Developer Docs. For optional onboarding in your VPC, Enterprise Jumpstart or Contact.