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Alation Data Catalog vs Pentaho Data Catalog 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 Metadata Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (4th)
Pentaho Data Catalog
Ranking in Metadata Management
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 11.3%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Data Catalog is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog11.3%
Pentaho Data Catalog1.6%
Other87.1%
Metadata Management
 

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.
Lisa Williams - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Office of Enterprise Data Management at State of Arizona
Helps make metadata available from our transactional databases, data warehouse, document management system, and GIS
As I've said, we've tagged a lot of fields that are related to specific processes, like the driller's log or, for example, if you want to get a license to be a well driller. Now, what I'm having to do for the consultants is create an Excel spreadsheet that has the name of the tag and a description of it. I'm now creating a data silo. What would be helpful is a place, inside Lumada Data Catalog, where you can describe the tags that you're using. Otherwise, anybody coming into the system, or seeing the tag from the outside in one of the reports, is going to say, "What is that tag really referring to?" and has to know where my spreadsheet is.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"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."
"We have improved data quality and accuracy, made informed decisions faster while reducing risks, and ensured compliance by enabling security and efficient access."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"But overall, we spend a lot of time tagging data and working on data quality rules."
"The ability to easily and quickly ingest new data sources is the most valuable feature... I'm not an especially technical IT person, but my data governance lead and I are able to ingest the data, quickly profile it, and do data identification and tagging."
 

Cons

"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 needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Alation Data Catalog can be improved by treating areas that could incorporate best practices or improvements, such as identifying data domains, which refer to logical data groups customers, vendors, and other entities."
"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."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"Data Catalog is not stable."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"As I've said, we've tagged a lot of fields that are related to specific processes, like the driller's log or, for example, if you want to get a license to be a well driller."
"We've tagged a lot of fields that are related to specific processes... What would be helpful is a place, inside Lumada Data Catalog, where you can describe the tags that you're using. Otherwise, anybody coming into the system, or seeing the tag from the outside in one of the reports, is going to say, "What is that tag really referring to?" and has to know where my spreadsheet is."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We can afford it. We got a three-year contract... If it were to go up and price a lot, I don't know if I would be able to keep it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Alation
Hitachi Lumada DataOps - Data Catalog
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Collibra, Informatica, Alation and others in Metadata Management. Updated: March 2026.
885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.