Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Alation Data Catalog vs Cyera comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
Cyera
Ranking in Data Governance
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (10th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (8th), AI Data Analysis (7th), AI Security (5th)
 

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 Cyera is 4.1%, up from 2.7% 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%
Cyera4.1%
Other91.9%
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.
reviewer2688711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Security Intern at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Inbuilt policies and analytics provide clarity on data security posture
There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry. Cyera could be more intuitive, and the UI could be more appealing and easier to read. Additionally, promoting the concept of Cyera to a wider audience, including schools and universities, could increase awareness.

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 users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"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."
"Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert, saving them quite a bit of time and frustration and allowing them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog."
"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 is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"We do see a return on investment, though I cannot share exact numbers."
"Cyera has an inbuilt set of policies implemented towards data security, especially cohering with Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)."
"I like how they model the data. They find data in different places that we didn't know, and they can give us a good idea if it's sensitive or not. They understand whether or not something is in the right region because, with the cloud posture management tool, we could see certain things in the infrastructure, but the way they dig into the data is what we like."
"The data discovery, data classification, and CSPM features are most valuable."
 

Cons

"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."
"Sometimes the search function in Alation Data Catalog isn't as effective as it could be."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"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."
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"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."
"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 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."
"As a startup company, there is a long way for them to go in terms of scalability."
"They need to add a few things in the UI from an enterprise perspective. It's more along the lines of being able to self-service, have integrations, build alerts, and things like that. Outside of that, they work with us on the API and getting alerts into our SIEM and things like that. There's always a way to do something, and they're always available, which is nice."
"There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry."
 

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."
"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."
"I don't know how much exactly it costs, but I know that it's a yearly thing. It's something that will cost money for any company because they're storing all this information. They're doing all this machine learning, and there are a lot of services on their backend that they got to pay for. I'm sure it gets translated back to the customers unless you have everything completely on-prem. If you're not doing much in the cloud, then I could see how it'd be cheaper, but if you have anything that's cloud-hosted and does all the work for you, there's going to be a cost associated with it."
"Compared to the competitors, they are very reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Governance solutions are best for your needs.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare 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 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 do you like most about Cyera ?
The data discovery, data classification, and CSPM features are most valuable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cyera ?
Compared to the competitors, they are very reasonable.
What needs improvement with Cyera ?
There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry. Cyera could be more intuitive, and the UI could...
 

Also Known As

Alation
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Cyera's customers include the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Cboe), Granicus, Takeda, LifeLabs, United Talent Agency, ACV Auctions, and Armis
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Cyera and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.