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Alation Data Catalog vs Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (3rd)
Protegrity’s Data Protectio...
Ranking in Data Governance
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Database Security (6th), Data Masking (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 3.1%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog3.1%
Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform1.2%
Other95.7%
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.
Bethanywalstad Wallister - PeerSpot reviewer
Java Application Developer at Technologies
Data protection platform has secured sensitive test data and supports confident project work
In my opinion, Protegrity's Data Protection Platform has really worked well and has done the best work. What it lacks is quality features, but we cannot expect that unless in profiling types of tools. Masking is layered well in different types of data. I can say that the system works well. I have not had any downsides when working with this platform; most of the time it lags down only when we are working on large volumes of data, and that's when we can experience minimal lags. The needed improvement is that the system can be upgraded to be faster and more flexible when it comes to speed, so it can handle large volumes of data without any challenge.

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 improving the data marketplace section, the data utilization section, and the quality of the data."
"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."
"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."
"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 can customize templates based on our use cases."
"We do see a return on investment, though I cannot share exact numbers."
"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."
"We have improved data quality and accuracy, made informed decisions faster while reducing risks, and ensured compliance by enabling security and efficient access."
"I can fully recommend Protegrity's Data Protection Platform to others looking for data protection and for streamlining data operations in an organization because this is the most flexible platform for managing data in terms of security and production."
"The solution’s pricing is moderate."
"The most valuable feature of Protegrity Data Security is the reduction of information being exposed."
"Overall, I have had a positive experience with Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform, as it provides strong data protection capabilities, supports compliance requirements, and helps organizations securely use sensitive data across business and analytics workloads."
"The product is stable."
"Its technical support team is helpful."
 

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."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"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."
"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 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."
"Protegrity is using a different OS which has some bugs. Sometimes it's causing an initialization error."
"I can see that the price of Protegrity's Data Protection Platform is a bit high, but the setup is flexible, and the licensing terms are easy to manage, usually complying with our enterprise policies."
"The solution's UI could be better."
"Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform could be improved by simplifying deployment and integrations, as well as providing more advanced reporting and dashboard capabilities."
"Protegrity Data Security could improve by having more integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We pay for a few additional services apart from its licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 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...
What needs improvement with Protegrity Data Security?
Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform could be improved by simplifying deployment and integrations, as well as providing more advanced reporting and dashboard capabilities. I would like to see a mo...
What is your primary use case for Protegrity Data Security?
I use Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform to protect sensitive customer and business data through data masking, tokenization, and encryption while supporting regulatory compliance with secure dat...
What advice do you have for others considering Protegrity Data Security?
The AI governance and security capabilities are aligned with enterprise requirements, providing policy-based control, data protection, and compliance support for AI, analytics, and workloads. Overa...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Protegrity Data Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
A $4 billion retail conglomerate and holding company
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.