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Alation Data Catalog vs SAS Data Governance 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
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (3rd)
SAS Data Governance
Ranking in Data Governance
42nd
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 3.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Data Governance is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog3.4%
SAS Data Governance0.7%
Other95.9%
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.
Adbul Samad Gabru - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analyst at Look Alive Investment Pvt. Ltd.
An exceptionally stable and scalable product that helps businesses in the area of data integrity
I am kind of not at the forefront of anything anymore in my company. I kind of don't want to give a point of view on what needs improvement when I feel I am not adequately in a position to give it. In today's time, to be competitive, the solution's price should be lowered.

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."
"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"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."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable 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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"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 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."
"It is a very professional product. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"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."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"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."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"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."
"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."
"In today's time, to be competitive, the solution's price should be lowered."
 

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."
"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."
"It is an expensive product. In a company, you need to employ additional people to take care of the product, which can be considered as a part of the sundry expenses when it comes to the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
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
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Canada Post, Ceska pojistovna, Chantecler, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, iJET, Invacare, Livzon Pharmaceutical Group, Los Angeles County, Transitions Optical, Triad Analytic Solutions, UNIQA, US Census Bureau
Find out what your peers are saying about Collibra, Microsoft, Informatica and others in Data Governance. Updated: May 2026.
900,196 professionals have used our research since 2012.