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Alation Data Catalog vs Collibra Governance 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
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (2nd)
Collibra Governance
Ranking in Data Governance
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 5.9%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Collibra Governance is 9.8%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam - PeerSpot reviewer
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.…
DeepakArora - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing data management with user-friendly features but needs better documentation
We are a customer of Collibra. Collibra Governance is applied in our data management workflows by creating all the business functions separately, maintaining the data sources of those KPIs and everything separately on those businesses Collibra Governance provides ease of use. The portal is…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 can customize templates based on our use cases."
"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"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."
"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's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"I rate the technical support from Collibra as nine out of ten."
"The diagram showing the limits is absolutely magnificent."
"It helps us build a powerful workflow mechanism where there can be any stewardship, including issue management governing assets using policies, regulations, or business rules."
"The catalog feature is definitely valuable because it makes ingesting the metadata of any application quite simple. You don't have to do things manually. You can just schedule an import, and it will just refresh the metadata of whatever application you want. That's what I like. I usually work on the technical side, and other than that, I usually create integrations. I integrate Collibra with different environments or applications. I'm a developer, so I cannot vouch for the business, but for me, it is quite developer-friendly with the Java API interface and the REST API interface that they have provided. It is good for creating dashboards based on the needs of each and every role. It can be user-specific or group-specific. We usually create dashboards and give them to our business users, and they are quite happy with that."
"This solution is user friendly and offers multiple functionalities. It operates like a kind of a repository that allows you to find anything about a particular data set or field."
"Collibra Governance allows users to scan the data in the Schema and check its quality"
"The feature I like most in Collibra Governance is the lineage. It lets me do lineage that you can set up, for example, technical lineage and business lineage. The solution lets me associate the right people with the right assets, so anybody who has to look at end-to-end instances can use Collibra Governance and figure it out, in terms of who to contact, what to do, and where to find what you need."
"The solution has good workflows and is based on AIML."
 

Cons

"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."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"I'm fairly new to the product, however, what I generally hear from my clients is that the requirement around having ways to ingest more metadata."
"It should have more integrations with things like CyberArk because its main purpose is GDPR implementation. We have to have more scope for things that implement more privacy. CyberArk makes sure your credentials are vaulted and your things are secure when you're creating your integrations or connecting to an application. I do believe that they are working on this feature."
"The solution's metadata management is pretty novice and could be improved."
"No easy way to connect to different data sources."
"I would like to see a feature using the runtime dashboard."
"The platform can sometimes be unstable, particularly in terms of speed and reconnection issues."
"When you have a huge amount of hierarchical data to manage, the solution's performance tends to decrease."
"Recently, I find that the default process of issue management in Collibra is really complex — It wasn't really helpful to us."
 

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 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 platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"I rate the pricing a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap."
"Collibra provides you with a license based on the subscription model that you purchase."
"I think they have a trust issue. I did not like the way they recently went through the process. They were like, "Finish this SOW first, only then will we sign the other SOW." Or, "Finish this code." I didn't like that much."
"Generally, it is a rather expensive solution compared to some other tools in the market, but I found it to be fair-priced for its capabilities."
"There are different levels of licenses. For example, some users can only do read-only licenses, and others have the stewardship license where they can give access to users."
"It is substantial, and we do pay yearly."
"I am not so much aware of price details. Initially, there was an add-on NuSoft license to use the DVC connector that NuSoft gives to create integrations, but Collibra is now phasing out of it slowly. Collibra is cutting ties with them is what we have been led to believe, and we have started developing on Spring Boot, which is open source."
"Collibra Governance is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The price difference between Alation Data Catalog and Collibra was not significant. Collibra is a little bit expensive than Alation, but I presented the benefits of having that platform, so that li...
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, lacking good visualization. In a fast-paced world, we need to grasp information ...
What do you like most about Collibra Governance?
We use the solution's Data Stewardship part.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Collibra Governance?
The pricing of Collibra Governance is moderate. It is neither extremely costly nor very cheap, as it depends on the use case and specific requirements.
What needs improvement with Collibra Governance?
There is room for improvement in the Collibra Data Catalog regarding data classification and categorization. It struggles to catalog all categories of data, particularly sensitive data on-prem, whi...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Collibra
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Ministry of Economy Science and Innovation, Aspen Insurance, Barry Callebaut, Colt
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Collibra Governance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
852,780 professionals have used our research since 2012.