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Alation Data Catalog vs Vanta 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:
 

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)
Vanta
Ranking in Data Governance
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Compliance Consulting (1st), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

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 Vanta is 1.3%, up from 0.8% 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%
Vanta1.3%
Other94.7%
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.
reviewer2585640 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Compliance workflows have become organized and automation supports ongoing healthcare audits
There are always tons of rooms for improvement for Vanta. I kind of exaggerated a little bit about the policy control. I don't really love the way they handle the revision management of that feature. If I'm on V1 of the policy document and I make some changes to it, then I get rid of V1 and then I re-upload V2. It's not that it keeps a running history of each of the different revisions. A little bit of an issue with that, but workable. I don't really have any negative complaint right now that would be worthwhile expressing. It's just that there's a lot of features. The UI is not super intuitive, but now that I've worked with it for a couple of years, I know how to navigate and get around. Initially, it was a little bit of a struggle understanding how these things would all work.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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 platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"Vanta's integrations and automated tests have streamlined our SOC 2 compliance and provided a single entry point for addressing risks and failed tests."
"They integrate into New Relic as a performance monitoring tool."
"After implementing those changes with Vanta, we tracked specific outcomes and metrics and improved compliance scores, which we can see in Vanta."
"It helps us track the compliance of the components listed in our partner's directory. We can also check if the password manager, XML, and three log policies have been properly implemented on the desktop."
"Vanta has positively impacted my organization by streamlining the whole HITRUST R2 assessment process."
"Vanta provides a necessary repository that any compliance expert will look at and recognize right away."
"The most valuable feature of Vanta would be the time savings from the automation and the continuous compliance monitoring once set up."
"The product has provided automated security controls for our cloud provider. It helps to automate security checks. Vanta offers a list of things that can be done to achieve ISO 27001 compliance."
 

Cons

"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"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."
"Permissions for platform users have been an issue. We've had to give admin access to Vanta for another team member to view all items."
"I would tell others looking into using Vanta to use it for HITRUST E1 and I1 assessments, as the R2 assessments are still a work in progress."
"There is a delay with customer support and they are unsure of the answers we need."
"They have an AI generator for the system description for SOC 2, however, the outline is a little sketchy."
"The main area for improvement in Vanta is the user interface's refresh rate."
"Failed tests for device CVEs seem to be cumulative, meaning I have to clear all CVEs before the test will pass, which makes it difficult to resolve the test before the next round of CVEs are published."
"Some of the tool's automated tests do not work the way it should."
"There are connection problems about 50% of the time because of the automated evidence collection."
 

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."
"Vanta is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
 

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 Vanta?
The most valuable feature of Vanta is its prebuilt control frameworks.
What needs improvement with Vanta?
Failed tests for device CVEs seem to be cumulative, meaning I have to clear all CVEs before the test will pass, which makes it difficult to resolve the test before the next round of CVEs are publis...
What is your primary use case for Vanta?
My use case involves SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance.
 

Also Known As

Alation
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Care Directives, Shortcut , Nayya, Heizenrader, Treasury Prime
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Vanta and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.