Combined vs Nango: managed SQL or integration code you control?
Compare Combined and Nango for synced business data. See who owns integration logic, records, SQL, agent access, and custom-field maintenance.
Choose Combined when you want managed business-data ingestion, storage, and read-only SQL for an agent. Choose Nango when provider-specific integration behavior is part of your product and you want to control the code. Nango supports syncs and stored records as well as auth and tools; the decision is how much of the data application you want to build.
Compare ownership of the complete data path
A successful OAuth connection is only the first milestone. For a business-data agent, the useful end state is a maintained dataset, a known schema, the right grants, and an answer. We build Combined to deliver that managed path. Nango is attractive when your application needs integration behavior that your developers can shape, test, and evolve.
| Decision | Combined | Nango |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Connect a Source and expose synced datasets to an agent. | Enable templates or deploy integration functions for your product. |
| Replication | Managed ingestion and storage of selected business records. | Sync functions write records to a cache your app can consume. |
| Agent access | Six read-only MCP tools, with SQL over granted Sources. | Expose selected integration functions through APIs or MCP. |
| Customization | Select supported data and define analysis using discovered schemas. | Own provider logic, models, filtering, and customer-specific behavior. |
| Coverage check | Ready connection route and required datasets/fields. | Provider auth plus the template or function your workload needs. |
| Pricing inputs | Monthly active records. | Connections, integration compute, and data transfer. |
Nango's column is grounded in its functions guide, storage documentation, and pricing.
Nango gives you integration control; Combined gives you queryable data
Nango handles integration infrastructure such as credentials, retries, rate limits, and observability. Developers can enable existing functions or customize TypeScript logic. Functions run for a particular integration and connection, with scheduled, on-demand, webhook, and lifecycle execution paths. That control is valuable when integration behavior is a feature of your application. See the Nango functions guide.
Nango also stores sync output in a records cache; your app can fetch those records and consume changes. Connection metadata can carry configuration such as a customer's field mapping. These capabilities support applications that need a reusable integration runtime and their own data consumer. See Nango storage.
Combined's advantage is the managed route from that business data to SQL. You connect Sources, inspect their logical datasets, and grant an agent access without building a separate analytical store and query endpoint. The agent still needs a definition of “active customer” and a valid customer key; no connector can decide those business rules for you. Combined's 1,125 connectors include desktop-generated connections, with availability and data shape checked for the specific source.
Run a custom-field ownership exercise
Pick a real field that matters to your product: account tier, renewal owner, implementation status, or a customer-specific segmentation property. Evaluate one normal record, one missing value, and one changed value. Use a test account or existing authorized records; the exercise is about the path to a trustworthy answer.
- Write down the desired output: one customer per row, its segment, and a count of open support cases. Agree on the ID mapping and what a missing segment means.
- In Combined, confirm the field is supported and selected. After a successful sync, discover both schemas, check freshness, and aggregate cases before joining them to customer records.
- In Nango, identify the matching template or function, its output model, and the consumer that will serve this answer. For a sync implementation, inspect pagination, checkpoints, and change handling using Nango's sync function guide.
- Trace how a permitted test change reaches the answer. Record which configuration, function, consumer, and query need maintenance when the requested field changes.
Discover the granted customer and support datasets. Find the actual
account-tier field and customer identifiers. Count open support cases
per customer, keeping customers with no cases. Show missing tier values
as unknown. Report the join key, source freshness, and SQL. If a needed
field is unavailable, identify that gap before calculating the result.Keep a short ownership sheet: who changes the integration, who repairs a failed sync, who operates the query service, and who updates the metric. A working template can make Nango very quick to adopt. A managed query surface can remove work when the desired deliverable is the answer itself.
Choose based on the product you are building
Nango's current pricing meters connections, compute time, and transfer, with a free plan and a paid usage model. Include any application database, query service, and engineering work your design adds. For Combined, estimate initial ingestion and subsequent monthly active records using the MAR pricing model. Neither stored row count nor the number of OAuth connections is a complete cost forecast.
Choose Nango when custom provider behavior belongs in your codebase and that flexibility helps your product compete. Choose Combined when your team wants to connect business applications and get to reliable agent queries with less data infrastructure to operate. Start with one useful question and expand after its fields, freshness, and access are established.
Sources and further reading
Explore the documentation behind this guide. Product details checked on September 10, 2026.