Artie vs. AWS DMS

DMS gets CDC running.
Artie is for teams who can’t afford CDC breaking.

Factor

AWS DMS

Artie

Built for

One-time database migrations

Real-time data replication

Architecture

DMS task → S3 → Snowpipe / custom MERGE

Durable streaming on a Kafka-backed log

Replication latency

Near-real-time, degrades silently under load

Seconds, predictable under traffic spikes

Pipeline ownership

DIY: S3 staging, MERGE logic, monitoring, recovery scripts you own forever

Fully managed end-to-end 
Capture, buffer, merge, monitor, alert

Schema evolution

Manual handling – a common cause of breakage

Auto-detected DDL, deletes, and type changes

MERGE / upsert logic

Hand-written and owned forever

Built-in, no glue code

Failure recovery

Restart task; often forces a full backfill

Kafka offset replay, exactly-once delivery

Backfill behavior

Full re-sync that can take days; downstream products go offline

Online, parallel with CDC, replica-aware – no downtime

Ordering & correctness under load

Out-of-order writes and missing rows under traffic spikes

Exactly-once delivery, ordered per primary key

Postgres replication-slot impact

Multiple slots/tasks → WAL retention, disk pressure, primary CPU/IO impact

Single slot, replica-aware reads — no impact on the primary

Observability

Stitched together: CloudWatch + S3 inspection + warehouse logs

Per-table lag, throughput, and alerts via Datadog / PagerDuty

Failure mode

Pipelines fail quietly – broken dashboards are the first signal

Alerts fire before downstream notices

Pricing model

DMS instance + S3 + Snowpipe + permanent engineering time

Predictable usage tier Backfills always free

Deployment options

AWS only

Cloud or BYOC (your VPC)

Enterprise compliance

Inherits AWS posture – you wire up the controls

SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA Column-level PII controls included

Best fit

One-time migrations into AWS

Mission-critical real-time database pipelines

Where Artie wins

Durable streaming, not file staging

A Kafka-backed log decouples source and destination. No S3 backlog, no silent latency growth, and no data loss during destination downtime. Pipelines behave the same at peak as off-peak.

Built-in merge & schema handling

Artie auto-detects DDL, deletes, type changes and handles MERGE for you. No hand-written upsert logic, no schema-drift babysitting, no 2 a.m. pages when a column gets added upstream.

End-to-end ownership & observability

One place to see capture, buffering, merge, lag, and throughput. Per-table alerting via Datadog / PagerDuty. We know it's broken before your dashboards do.

Predictable cost, deploy where your data lives

Fixed pricing with free backfills. Run Artie Cloud or in your VPC (BYOC). SOC 2 Type II on every plan, with column-level PII controls included.

Start for Free

Book a Demo

Switching from DMS to Artie
takes hours, not weeks

What stays the same

The cutover playbook

Your AWS-hosted databases: RDS, Aurora, EC2-hosted Postgres / MySQL, DynamoDB
Your warehouse: Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Iceberg
Your destination schemas: same tables, same columns
Your dbt models, dashboards, and BI tools: keep working unchanged
Your security model: VPC, IAM, encryption, network isolation

Run Artie in parallel with DMS during a validation period. Both write to the same warehouse without conflict.
Compare row counts, latency, and correctness side by side on real production traffic.
Cut downstream views or dbt models over to Artie tables once validated.
Stop the DMS task. No rip-and-replace event, no destination migration.

Frequently asked questions

Artie vs. AWS DMS

DMS gets CDC running.Artie is for teams who can’t afford CDC breaking.

Where Artie wins

Durable streaming, not file staging

Built-in merge & schema handling

End-to-end ownership & observability

Predictable cost, deploy where your data lives

Switching from DMS to Artietakes hours, not weeks

What stays the same

The cutover playbook

Isn't AWS DMS managed already?

We already have DMS running. Isn't switching risky?

DMS is basically free on our AWS bill. How does Artie compare?

Our use case isn't that complex and DMS works fine for us today.

Near-real-time is good enough for us.

Will switching break our dbt models, dashboards, or BI tools?

We're in a regulated industry. Does Artie support HIPAA or BYOC?

Manage Consent Preferences

DMS gets CDC running.
Artie is for teams who can’t afford CDC breaking.

Switching from DMS to Artie
takes hours, not weeks