Comparison · Verified May 2026
SynthForge vs Tonic.ai
Tonic.ai and SynthForge solve adjacent but distinct problems. Tonic Structural sanitizes data you already have. SynthForge generates data you do not have yet. The right answer depends on whether a real production database is in your hand.
TL;DR
If you have a production database with PII that needs to become safe to share, Tonic Structural is purpose-built for that and is more mature than anything SynthForge does. If you do not have a source database (you are pre-launch, or you cannot get a copy of prod for compliance reasons), Tonic Structural cannot help you. Tonic launched a separate greenfield product, Tonic Fabricate, in November 2025; that is the head-to-head with SynthForge.
Recent context
As of May 2026, Tonic ships three products: Structural (de-identification of source databases), Textual (LLM redaction of unstructured docs), and Fabricate (greenfield generation, the direct SynthForge competitor). Tonic acquired Fabricate from Mockaroo's creator in April 2025 and relaunched it as the Fabricate Data Agent in November 2025. Tonic Ephemeral was sunset in December 2025; it is no longer part of the lineup. Tonic itself is independent (not acquired) with ~100 employees and reported $18.1M revenue across 30 customers per Latka, October 2024.
When Tonic.ai is the right call
- • You have a real production database (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, Snowflake, Databricks, etc.) and you need a safe synthetic copy for staging or vendor sharing. This is Tonic Structural's wheelhouse and SynthForge does not do it.
- • You need privacy techniques applied to existing data: format-preserving encryption, NER-driven PII detection, masking, tokenization, generalization. Tonic Structural ships these.
- • You need to redact unstructured documents (PDFs, DOCX, audio) and replace PII with safe synthetic equivalents. Tonic Textual handles this.
- • You are an enterprise that requires self-hosted or VPC deployment. Tonic offers it; SynthForge is cloud-only today.
- • You need an established vendor-of-record with enterprise procurement workflows already in place.
When SynthForge is the right call
- • You do not have a source database to de-identify. You are pre-launch, or compliance forbids copying prod, or you are designing the schema for a new feature.
- • You want a free hosted product without a sales call. SynthForge is free; Tonic Structural is contact-sales only.
- • You want native exports across seven SQL dialects. Tonic Fabricate currently lists Postgres, MySQL, Databricks, and Oracle as DB targets.
- • You need pre-built ML training-dataset templates with baseline model evaluation, not a chat-based agent that builds them from prompts.
- • Your pricing budget is closer to $0 than to enterprise contract sizes. Tonic Fabricate Plus is $29/mo for $25 of credits; Tonic Structural is custom pricing.
Feature comparison
Verified against primary sources in May 2026.
| Feature | SynthForge | Tonic.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Greenfield test data from a schema | Structural: de-identify a real DB. Textual: redact unstructured docs. Fabricate: greenfield generation (direct competitor). |
| Requires a source database | No | Structural: yes. Textual: source documents. Fabricate: no. |
| Free tier | Yes; quota-throttled, no credit card | Fabricate Free: $0/mo with $10 credits. Textual: free signup with metered usage. Structural: no free tier; demo only. |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | Fabricate and Textual: yes. Structural: contact sales. |
| Multi-table FK preservation | Yes (single-column, by construction) | Yes. Structural and Fabricate both preserve relational integrity |
| AI schema design | Whole-schema generation from natural language (Claude / OpenAI) | Fabricate Data Agent: chat-based iterative schema/data generation |
| Source DB connectors | N/A (no ingestion) | Structural: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, MongoDB, Salesforce, S3 |
| PII detection on source data | No (no source ingestion) | Structural: NER-based PII/PHI detection, sensitivity rules, privacy rankings |
| Differential privacy | No | Not headlined on Structural; Tonic does not market DP as a primary feature (unlike NVIDIA NeMo Safe Synthesizer) |
| Self-hosted / on-prem | No | Yes. Enterprise tier; SaaS, self-hosted, or hybrid |
| SQL output dialects | PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, MariaDB, DuckDB, CockroachDB | Fabricate: Postgres, MySQL, Databricks, Oracle DB targets + JSON/CSV/PDF/DOCX/EML files + mock REST APIs |
| ML training dataset templates | Yes (6+ pre-built domain templates with baseline evaluation) | Not a positioned feature |
| Mock REST API generation | No | Yes (Fabricate) |
Pricing comparison
SynthForge
All features. No credit card. Per-account rate limits and a 10M-row hard cap per generation request.
Tonic.ai
$10 of monthly usage credits. No credit card. Direct head-to-head with SynthForge for greenfield use.
$25 credits + metered overage. Self-serve.
Sales-gated. Volume credits, SSO, etc.
Free trial via self-serve signup. Enterprise tier custom.
Reported by reviewers as enterprise-shaped. Pricing scales with source data volume (TB) and user seats. G2 / Capterra reviews flag it as 'rather steep' for small teams.
What SynthForge does not do that Tonic.ai does
Honest tradeoffs, in case they decide the comparison for you.
- • Tonic Structural is a more mature de-identification product than anything SynthForge does. If you have a real prod DB, use the right tool.
- • Tonic Fabricate has built-in mock REST API generation and PDF/DOCX/EML output. SynthForge does not.
- • Tonic offers self-hosted deployment for enterprise customers. SynthForge is cloud-only today.
- • Tonic Textual handles unstructured PII redaction. SynthForge has no document-redaction product.
- • If you need an established procurement-friendly enterprise vendor, Tonic has the contracts, security paperwork, and 100+ employee headcount. SynthForge does not yet.
Frequently asked questions
Did Tonic.ai acquire SynthForge?
What is Tonic Ephemeral?
If I have a Postgres production database with customer PII, does SynthForge help?
Is Tonic Fabricate better than SynthForge?
Does Tonic do differential privacy?
Can I use SynthForge and Tonic together?
Sources used to verify these claims
Other SynthForge comparisons
Try SynthForge for free
Design a multi-table schema, generate referentially-intact data, and export to your database. No credit card.