No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Alation Data Catalog vs Unifi 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)
Unifi
Ranking in Data Governance
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (58th), Data Preparation Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 3.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Unifi is 0.9%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog3.6%
Unifi0.9%
Other95.5%
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.
Doug Isabelle - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Doc-IT
Good management and pricing but not great for enterprise environments
In a high-density location, we're running into connectivity drops. There may be too many rouge devices broadcasting, and the devices is getting interference from another channel. The only to fix this is to reboot and we need something that reboots on the fly. We also need better security for VLANs and VPNs. There are issues with certain Apple devices. Technical support is not very helpful. The initial setup, which seemed straightforward at first, had to be redone. This may not have been the fault of the product. We're not sure what went wrong.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"We had nothing before, so we can't compare anything we used before with what we've got now, but what we've got now is infinitely better."
"It's easy to manage and supports the user, our guests, and our customers if they have a problem."
"It's easy to manage and support the user, our guests, and our customers if they have a problem."
"The controller makes it easy to control everything from one platform. The management is easy."
 

Cons

"I notice a couple of pain points with Alation Data Catalog: they can improve on the lineage perspective and improve their data sources integration."
"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."
"Sometimes the search function in Alation Data Catalog isn't as effective as it could be."
"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."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"It's stable, but it depends on the office and location."
"It's stable, but it depends on the office and location."
"There are issues with certain Apple devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little expensive."
"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."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"There is no license. The solution is free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Governance solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Construction Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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 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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Alation
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Big Incites, Cloudera, Flywheel Data, Hortonworks, MapR, Platfora, Qlik, Tableau Software, zData Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Unifi and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.