Alation Data Catalog vs BigID vs Varonis Platform comparison

Read 12 BigID reviews

4,631 Views
3,797 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Varonis Platform

Read 14 Varonis Platform reviews

9,243 Views
4,437 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Alation Data Catalog

Varonis Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Alation Data Catalog, BigID, and Varonis Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Collibra and others in Data Governance.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Governance Report (Updated: September 2025).

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Data Governance

September 2025

Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 5.3%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigID is 6.8%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 10.6%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Governance Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Varonis Platform	10.6%
BigID	6.8%
Alation Data Catalog	5.3%
Other	77.3%

Data Governance

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam

Developer at CVS Health

Has metadata cataloging features but needs changes in domain model

The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature. The tool's domain model needs to be changed. Alation Data Catalog is stable. The solution is scalable. Alation Data Catalog's deployment is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment takes only two to three hours to complete.…

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Ankita Sabale

Senior Associate - IT Governance and Compliance at Fulcrum Digital Inc

Predefined classifiers in place support sensitive data scanning effectively

BigID does not currently support Kerberos authentication for DataStax. On the user interface, analyzing true and false positives can be challenging, as I can only view 2,000 characters at a time. When tagging scan results, all objects get tagged without the option to untag specific ones. This requires reverting changes through MongoDB, which can result in data loss.

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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."

"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."

"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 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's best feature is the SQL query publication."

"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."

"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 solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."

More Alation Data Catalog pros

"BigID integrates well with our other products."

"The tool's most valuable feature is correlation. Using BigID's data classification capabilities has strengthened our data security. It lets me classify and connect data, which helps me manage data at various classification levels."

"BigID's scanning feature is its most valuable component."

"The features that I have found most valuable are the user experience, the credentialing, and that BigID is user friendly. Additionally, you can deploy to several other Microsoft platforms and you can use it for other things, like a bigger element or a report."

"The most valuable feature of BigID is its large number of classifiers, which allow us to scan for specific data such as SSN numbers."

"I like BigID's in-depth discovery and scanning capabilities, especially for unstructured data. This feature is a standout compared to competitors. The tool's data classification capabilities are impressive. It offers custom classifiers and a blend of regular exploration and artificial intelligence, making it a next-generation solution. This enhances data security, and its security posture management is straightforward and user-friendly."

"One of the most valuable things in a data-focused world is a tool, a technology that's data-centric, not trying to master data management or whatever else. It's a source of truth for what data an organization holds, giving it the ability to catalog, categorize, and understand its data."

"The most valuable feature of BigID is its large number of classifiers, which allow us to scan for specific data such as SSN numbers."

More BigID pros

"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."

"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."

"That alerting and reporting service is great."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

"The solution's classification engine is highly configurable and efficient."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"

"The product's data governance features need improvement."

"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."

"The interface is not user-friendly."

"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."

"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."

"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."

More Alation Data Catalog cons

"The tool currently lacks security features."

"BigID needs improvement in terms of automation."

"There are some shortcomings when it comes to Calvirus authentication, which is not yet supported by BigID."

"More classifications about different states are needed"

"Some users find catalog navigation challenging due to the lack of a search-by-column feature, which makes it difficult to locate specific data quickly."

"There are some shortcomings when it comes to Calvirus authentication, which is not yet supported by BigID."

"I want them to focus on data mapping, assessment, automation workflow, and privacy incident management."

"One concern I have with BigID is regarding certain scans, like the multi-scan. The issue is that we can stop and retrieve these scans, but once they start, they go through an enumeration process."

More BigID cons

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."

"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"

"The remediation process can be improved. There will be no existing permission group for the McAfee channel domains. We can create a new permissions group for the required folder."

"The product is very complicated."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"It is significantly complex."

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."

"The solution is a little expensive."

"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."

"The solution is expensive."

"The product is expensive, but so are all competitor tools"

"I think that BigID's pricing is very reasonable."

"The pricing depends. If you have thousands of data sources to connect and manage, and you struggled with an MDM package in the past, you'll find BigID valuable and even cheap. But if you're a small business, it's probably not the right tool for you."

"The solution is not licensed per user but rather based on capacity. For instance, organizations with large amounts of data, such as 50 GB or more, are the ones that typically qualify for BigID."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

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 metadat...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?

The price difference between Alation Data Catalog and Collibra was not significant. Collibra is a little bit expensiv...

What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?

Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, ...

What do you like most about BigID?

I like BigID's in-depth discovery and scanning capabilities, especially for unstructured data. This feature is a stan...

What needs improvement with BigID?

BigID does not currently support Kerberos authentication for DataStax. On the user interface, analyzing true and fals...

What is your primary use case for BigID?

BigID is part of our data governance project. We onboard data sources in our environment and scan for specific sensit...

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area...

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organ...

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Alation Data Catalog

Comparisons

Compared 41% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Alation Data Catalog

Compared 13% of the time

Collibra Governance vs Alation Data Catalog

Compared 10% of the time

Atlan vs Alation Data Catalog

Compared 5% of the time

Ataccama ONE Platform vs Alation Data Catalog

Compared 2% of the time

More Alation Data Catalog Competitors

Cyera vs BigID

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs BigID

Compared 14% of the time

Securiti vs BigID

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs BigID

Compared 4% of the time

More BigID Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform

Compared 20% of the time

Cyera vs Varonis Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Wiz vs Varonis Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs Varonis Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Netskope Data Loss Prevention (DLP) vs Varonis Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Varonis Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Download Alation Data Catalog product report

Alation Data Catalog

October 2025

Download BigID product report

October 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Varonis Platform

September 2025

Also Known As

Alation

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Overview

Alation pioneered the data catalog market and is now leading its evolution into a platform for a broad range of data intelligence solutions including data search & discovery, data governance, lineage, stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation.

Thanks to its powerful Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight to successfully tackle even the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management. With Alation, analysts are empowered to search, query and collaborate on their data to achieve faster, more accurate insights.

Trusted by 400+ enterprises worldwide like Salesforce, Nasdaq, LinkedIn, Finnair, and Cisco.

Alation

BigID is a leader in data security, privacy, compliance, and governance: enabling organizations to proactively discover, manage, protect, and get more value from their data in a single platform for data visibility and control. Customers use BigID to reduce their data risk, automate security and privacy controls, achieve compliance, and understand their data across their entire data landscape: including multicloud, hybrid cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and on-prem data sources.

Drives visibility and control for all sensitive & critical datah
helps organizations understand and minimize data risk across the cloud & on-prem
AI automation
End-to-end data lifecycle management
DSPM
Data Security
Privacy Automation
Data inventory
Compliance