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Alation Data Catalog vs Atlan comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
4th
Ranking in Metadata Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Atlan
Ranking in Data Governance
11th
Ranking in Metadata Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 3.9%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Atlan is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog3.9%
Atlan2.0%
Other94.1%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2776527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data and Analytics Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Increases data discoverability and boosts self-service analytics through enriched metadata and intuitive search
The best features that Alation Data Catalog offers are its search capabilities and the fact that it works with many different data platforms; it is essentially platform agnostic. The other piece that I really think is important is how easy it is to use as well as to manage. What makes the search capabilities of Alation Data Catalog stand out for me is the fact that every item within the catalog is indexed and searchable, as well as the filtering features that allow you to narrow down to just the types of assets that you need. Wildcard searches are also very helpful. It is a very intuitive tool, as long as you are using the filters. Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert. This has saved them quite a bit of time and frustration. It has allowed them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog. We have been measuring the curation of content within the catalog that has gone up over time, and we have also seen the number of users in the catalog increase, as well as the amount of activity within the catalog increase. We were seeing about an average of about 20% increase month over month for the last few months.
Peter Neumann - PeerSpot reviewer
IT consultant at Pathfinder
Has struggled to meet business needs but supports technical data exploration and transparency
Atlan can be improved by concentrating more on business data since it is developed from developers for developers, and it needs to be more business relevant. For instance, when re-importing data model diagrams, Atlan provides some diagram automation that is not connected to the business glossary, which I consider a significant fault. Atlan needs to improve by focusing more on the business side of data, not only on technical aspects.If you want to focus on technical considerations, it would be beneficial to have an interface with a real business data modeling tool such as Erwin or other business data tools, since data modeling is not the same as Draw.io. Additionally, Atlan can improve its workflows, which are hard to understand. Working with templates, Excel import, export, and running automations is not self-explanatory, and you always need help from Atlan support team. If business people want to use it and run their own reports, it must be easier to customize for their business needs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by improving the data marketplace section, the data utilization section, and the quality of the data."
"Alation Data Catalog positively impacts my organization by improving data efficiency, data quality, and collaboration, allowing analysts to spend more time on analysis instead of searching and preparing, so they can just start their analysis."
"We have improved data quality and accuracy, made informed decisions faster while reducing risks, and ensured compliance by enabling security and efficient access."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"Overall, I rate Atlan as a ten out of ten."
"They also offer automated lineage embedded in the connectors, allowing us to track where the data is coming from and where it's going. We find it very efficient in cataloging data sources. Additionally, the user-friendly interface is a big plus, making it easy for users to familiarize themselves with the solution. These two features, in my opinion, stand out the most."
"The interfaces and automated imports have helped me with transparency, as we have different sources from different techniques such as DBT, Snowflake, and other regular databases, making it effective to connect these sources and navigate through them, filter them, and enrich the data with additional meter information."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time through automation."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time."
"As a senior analytics engineer, Atlan's ability to show end-to-end data lineage is the most important feature for me."
"Overall, I rate Atlan a nine out of ten."
"The best feature of Atlan is its integration with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack, so business users don't have to go into a data catalog to see metadata about data assets."
 

Cons

"Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface."
"Alation Data Catalog can be improved by treating areas that could incorporate best practices or improvements, such as identifying data domains, which refer to logical data groups customers, vendors, and other entities."
"Customer support for Atlan is not so proactive."
"Certain UI changes could make Atlan more user-friendly."
"Certain UI changes could make Atlan more user-friendly."
"In my experience, it might be less suited for collaboration across teams."
"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"One of the main areas for improvement is its governance capabilities. Atlan supports only basic out-of-the-box workflows, and it becomes challenging to customize features like how data owners should approve access to data assets."
"The challenge is in the lineage, where it requires improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little expensive."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"We pay per-user license. It's a different classification model than with other solutions, where they usually charge you for resources. So, that was a better model for us. And because of this difference in models or classification, it was cheaper for us to go with Atlan."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I haven't had any experience with pricing, setup costs, or licensing, as I have been strictly an end user and haven't had any administrative or management responsibilities.
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
Some of the downsides about the lineage is that some of the code is quite difficult to read as the formatting is a bit ugly sometimes. Alation Data Catalog can be improved with the lineage formatti...
What is your primary use case for Alation Data Catalog?
I have been using Alation Data Catalog for the past year now. My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is updating data descriptions and making sure analysts have what they need to do their job. W...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlan?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing cost is a bit flexible but not affordable for smaller organizations. It might be way out of their budget, but it is very ...
What needs improvement with Atlan?
Atlan can be improved by enhancing their support process by reducing the resolution time. They have really bad and incomplete documentation, so they should work on the documentation as well, especi...
What is your primary use case for Atlan?
My main use case for Atlan is to define a flexible set of metadata, including measuring the quality of said data. Atlan is also a partner of ours, so we use it to integrate with our own tool. It al...
 

Also Known As

Alation
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Atlan and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.