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Alation Data Catalog vs Microsoft Purview Information Protection 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Alation Data Catalog boosts efficiency by reducing search time, cutting costs, and enhancing user independence in data management.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Purview enhances protection, automates compliance, reduces response time, and supports growth, though exact savings are hard to quantify.
We have seen a return on investment, having saved close to 10.5% of our costs, with expected ROI growing yearly by about 17%.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Instead of going into Google or consulting a colleague, I can just go to Alation Data Catalog, search there, and understand everything by myself.
Data Engineer at Yum! Brands
Purview can do a quick scan, and it doesn't use human resources, so it gets time to do things that we need humans to focus on.
Mgr Data Engineering at Avanade
The E5 license comes with different solutions like data discovery classification, CASB, DLP solutions, and Defender for Cloud.
Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
The cost of data loss and your data going to a competitor is potentially massive.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Alation's support is generally positive, with fast ticket processing but some issues with time zones and complex problem-solving.
Sentiment score
4.0
Users experience inconsistent Microsoft Purview support, citing slow responses and unresolved issues, despite some improvements in visibility and engagement.
Some of them have dragged on for six months, which is much longer than we would ever want some support issues to go on.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
we have defined several SLAs that have resolved critical issues and incidents with excellent support.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
we have been able to contact them, and they have been able to help us whenever we have had issues
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sometimes, I get a fast and knowledgeable response, while other times, I've experienced delays and received no resolution.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
It's hard to be an ambassador for a product when you know it will be hard to get support.
Mgr Data Engineering at Avanade
After our issues are reported, it takes a long time to find a resolution.
Director Security Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Alation Data Catalog excels in scalability for expanding user bases and data size, with some API limitations on free versions.
Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is praised for scalability despite some concerns with data analytics speed and policy update intervals.
As data sizes grow, we can also scale categorizations, calibrations, and the types of data we ingest and catalog through this tool.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alation Data Catalog's scalability is really good since everything is cloud and everything gets pulled into the system via Snowflake and DBT automatically.
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Alation Data Catalog's scalability has met our needs as our data and user base has grown.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
It can be scaled across different departments organization-wide very quickly and easily.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
It can handle large collections of data without issues.
Mgr Data Engineering at Avanade
Scalability can be improved by reducing these intervals.
Information Technology Senior Expert at Garanti Teknoloji
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Alation Data Catalog is praised for stability, reliable performance, excellent maintenance, with minor on-premises outages and DBT load concerns.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Purview is stable and reliable, with minor delays and occasional drawbacks, fostering user trust and wide deployment.
It has never gone down when we wanted to access it.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Alation Data Catalog has been stable for me, as I haven't seen much downtime.
Senior ORM Analyst Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
From my experience, Alation Data Catalog is stable.
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Once implemented, I haven't had issues with its consistency.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
The product is stable, and whatever it does, it does better than any other thing.
Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
Since identity is where everything is based, if that goes down, you're screwed.
Director, Network & Cloud Infrastructure at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Alation Data Catalog needs improved lineage, user interface, automation, security, and integration with Power BI and external APIs.
Microsoft Purview requires better integration, pricing, navigation, and feature enhancements to address user concerns about functionality and support.
The platform needs improvement in integrating with BI tools, reducing manual efforts, and facilitating a smooth connection.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Additionally, bringing in AI capabilities to automate tracking and labeling can optimize how we handle data information levels.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
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.
Senior Data and Analytics Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Effectiveness in Microsoft Purview Information Protection means enforcing the policy and making sure it works consistently across non-Microsoft products as well.
Director Security Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
A lot of functionality in Microsoft Purview Information Protection is not exposed in an API officially yet, which has made a lot of implementation work difficult because we have to do click ops instead of DevOps.
CEO at Blue Cycle
Having a roadmap or updates about new releases would be helpful for demonstrating to clients.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
 

Setup Cost

Alation Data Catalog pricing is high, but discounts and long-term agreements offer better value compared to competitors.
Microsoft Purview offers competitive pricing, flexible enterprise licenses, and cost-effective bundled solutions, despite some complexity in licensing options.
Collibra is a little bit expensive than Alation, but I presented the benefits of having that platform, so that little bit of money was not a big deal.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Discussions with the vendor partners provided a detailed breakdown of costs and how they can be reduced over time.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
I talked to people who had compared it to other products on the market, and they're spending five figures to get started.
Mgr Data Engineering at Avanade
The E5 license covers most of the solutions for different technologies, so that way, it is good and more affordable compared to any other solution.
Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
Our focus is on helping customers maximize their software investment.
Business Development Manager, Transformational Services at Dell Technologies
 

Valuable Features

Alation Data Catalog boosts productivity with intuitive features, seamless data management, and enhances collaboration through advanced governance and cloud integration.
Microsoft Purview enhances data protection with encryption, automated labeling, and compliance, excelling in Microsoft ecosystem integration and management.
It was the only data catalog tool where I could save and even create SQL queries.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Importantly, we establish a single source of truth, centralizing metadata and standardizing definitions, which minimizes confusion and helps with consistent data use across the organization.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
My stakeholders can find relevant data assets quickly using a Google search without needing technical jargon, reducing the time spent searching for data.
Data Engineer at Yum! Brands
Microsoft Copilot is an advantage because it's enterprise-grade AI.
Business Development Manager, Transformational Services at Dell Technologies
It's paramount to have a single solution for information protection.
Client Experience Officer at 1234 Micro Technologies
Regardless of the education, the employee might share the information anyway, so the AI shouldn't be the first point of failure. It should be a human making good decisions.
Mgr Data Engineering at Avanade
 

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)
Microsoft Purview Informati...
Ranking in Data Governance
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Data Privacy Management Software (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 4.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is 2.5%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alation Data Catalog4.3%
Microsoft Purview Information Protection2.5%
Other93.2%
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.
Abhi T - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
Achieve comprehensive data protection with reliable performance and room for enhanced discovery accuracy
The product is still in a growing phase. I could see that many use cases in their product are not capable enough in terms of detecting or protecting. Compared to other products, they are in the middle of bringing their solution up to the mark, so it is not a full-grown solution. They have to get more accurate results in terms of data discovery and classification. The second thing is their support; support from Microsoft takes a lot of time to get a response from their support team. The third thing is their OCR capability is not that great in terms of identifying the documents. We would love to see response times of less than 24 hours. Additionally, there is no way to check the policy's current status in terms of whether it got synced or not. You have to wait and test the use cases after 24 hours or after 48 hours, and once it starts working, then it appears the policy got implemented.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

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 Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
It ensures that sensitive data is automatically safeguarded, even for email attachments, regardless of the user or device.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
In my experience with Microsoft Purview Information Protection, the experience of pricing, setup costs, and licensing is confusing, especially knowing what I have to do for add-ons with buying SCUs...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
I think the role of sensitivity labels in guiding AI interaction with Microsoft Purview Information Protection is pretty good, but for us, it's too general. It says, "Here's a dataset" and because ...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Microsoft Information Protection
 

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. Microsoft Purview Information Protection and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.