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Alation Data Catalog vs Immuta 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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (3rd)
Immuta
Ranking in Data Governance
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (13th), AI Data Analysis (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 4.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Immuta is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alation Data Catalog4.0%
Immuta1.8%
Other94.2%
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.
Dibyajyoti Rath - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analyst at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Centralized access control has secured sensitive data and supports compliant self-service analytics
Immuta is very helpful, but it can be improved in a few areas. The initial setup and policy design can be complex and require a learning curve. The user interface could be more interactive, especially for non-technical users. Policy troubleshooting and debugging could be easier with better visibility into why access was allowed or denied. Performance optimization and deeper integration with more tools could make it even better. Additional improvements would strengthen Immuta further. The documentation and real-world examples would help teams onboard faster. More out-of-the-box policy templates could reduce setup time. Improved policy simulation and testing would help teams understand the impact of changes before applying them. Stronger alerting and monitoring features would help quickly identify access issues. Finally, more end-user training and simplified workflows would make it easier for business users to adopt.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"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."
"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."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"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."
"What I appreciate the most is its user-friendliness."
"Immuta has had a very positive impact on our organization, helping us strengthen data security by ensuring sensitive data is only accessible to the right users, simplifying compliance with clear audit trails and consistent policy enforcement, reducing manual access management to save time for data and security teams, and enabling safe self-service analytics so our team can access data faster while still meeting governance and regulatory requirements."
"All features available are good."
"The tool's most valuable feature is restriction."
"Instead of manually tagging data, Immuta’s auto-discovery capability identifies sensitive information, such as country labels, gender information, and other personal data."
 

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."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"The current search functionality in Alation Data Catalog is not necessarily great. It mostly searches titles, and we would prefer it to search the description and some of the source comments to find answers that we need."
"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."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization."
"Sometimes the search function in Alation Data Catalog isn't as effective as it could be."
"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."
"The implementation process with Immuta was quite challenging, primarily due to issues related to database handling and the syncing of user groups."
"Immuta is behind in updating upgrades and software releases."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing the monitoring capabilities."
"We have had some challenges with their support when we were migrating to the cloud version. We we had some issues, and it took us several attempts to get a proper responses as part of that migration."
"Immuta is very helpful, but it can be improved in a few areas."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"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."
"Immuta's pricing is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
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.
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 needs improvement with Immuta?
Immuta is very helpful, but it can be improved in a few areas. The initial setup and policy design can be complex and require a learning curve. The user interface could be more interactive, especia...
What is your primary use case for Immuta?
My main use case for Immuta is data governance. In my project, which is a data governance project, I use Immuta as a centralized data access management tool. A specific example of how I use Immuta ...
What advice do you have for others considering Immuta?
My advice for others considering Immuta would be to plan your policies carefully. Think through roles, data sensitivity, and use cases before setup. Invest in training to ensure both technical and ...
 

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. Immuta and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.