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Alation Data Catalog vs Google Knowledge Catalog comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 23, 2026

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (3rd)
Google Knowledge Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
32nd
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Management Platforms (DMP) (16th)
 

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.
PraveenChatla - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Information at Ericsson
Managing limited lineage across clouds has highlighted missing connectors but has supported basic cataloging
There are no specific areas of Google Dataplex I think could be improved because that is not our priority. To improve or enhance Google Dataplex, I would point out the connections; there is a lack of connections, and the variety of databases are not in a position to connect. I assess the usefulness of Google Dataplex's centralized management layer in simplifying data operations across environments as not there yet because the connections are lacking. If I look at the environments of something such as Ericsson, there are so many environments; to connect to each and every system, they are not there yet.

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 has positively impacted my organization by allowing analysts to be onboarded much quicker and easier as a lot of their questions are answered within Alation Data Catalog."
"Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization as collaboration has definitely improved at my company, allowing us to reach out and know who owns data, which has been especially helpful with turnover and in building out the analytics side of our bank."
"We had some of our data science engineers, who had built out some cloud-based data and data products for users. They were spending a lot of their time, up to 30 to 35% of their time, answering questions about the data and helping people understand how to use it. Once they were able to document that information within Alation, they were only focusing on around 5% of the high-value questions that really couldn't be solved through the catalog itself. It freed them up to be more productive, it made their end-users more productive, and it made the adoption rate of their data products rise more quickly because people were able to get to using them."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"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."
"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"We do see a return on investment, though I cannot share exact numbers."
"Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert, which has saved them quite a bit of time and frustration, and allowed them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog."
"For Google Cloud data, Google Dataplex's AI-driven data classification has really helped; the out-of-the-box capabilities are good, and they have good classifiers."
 

Cons

"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"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 is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization."
"I notice a couple of pain points with Alation Data Catalog: they can improve on the lineage perspective and improve their data sources integration."
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"Sometimes the search function in Alation Data Catalog isn't as effective as it could be."
"I assess the usefulness of Google Dataplex's centralized management layer in simplifying data operations across environments as not there yet because the connections are lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"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."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Media Company
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Transportation Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with Google Dataplex?
There are no specific areas of Google Dataplex I think could be improved because that is not our priority. To improve or enhance Google Dataplex, I would point out the connections; there is a lack ...
What is your primary use case for Google Dataplex?
My usual use cases for Google Dataplex involve a team specifically managing their data, BCSS, which is a software services group and cloud software services group. They have a lot of data managed i...
What advice do you have for others considering Google Dataplex?
Recently, I have been working with Informatica, specifically with IDMS, data quality, and integration systems also of Informatica. Currently, I am not working with it, but I am in the process of ge...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Google Dataplex
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
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