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Atlan vs Microsoft Purview Data Governance 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

Atlan
Ranking in Data Governance
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (4th)
Microsoft Purview Data Gove...
Ranking in Data Governance
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Atlan is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 11.5%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Data Governance11.5%
Atlan2.0%
Other86.5%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Neumann - PeerSpot reviewer
IT consultant at Pathfinder
Has struggled to meet business needs but supports technical data exploration and transparency
Atlan can be improved by concentrating more on business data since it is developed from developers for developers, and it needs to be more business relevant. For instance, when re-importing data model diagrams, Atlan provides some diagram automation that is not connected to the business glossary, which I consider a significant fault. Atlan needs to improve by focusing more on the business side of data, not only on technical aspects.If you want to focus on technical considerations, it would be beneficial to have an interface with a real business data modeling tool such as Erwin or other business data tools, since data modeling is not the same as Draw.io. Additionally, Atlan can improve its workflows, which are hard to understand. Working with templates, Excel import, export, and running automations is not self-explanatory, and you always need help from Atlan support team. If business people want to use it and run their own reports, it must be easier to customize for their business needs.
AS
Tech lead at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automated data discovery has streamlined management while configuration remains complex
Compared to Big-ID, Microsoft Purview Data Governance looks complicated to me. I do not feel it has a good user-level UI. The interface feels a little complicated compared to Big-ID. I did not appreciate the configuration part. It felt complex, whereas when I went for a Big-ID demo, the interface looked better and was easier to understand for any user.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As a senior analytics engineer, Atlan's ability to show end-to-end data lineage is the most important feature for me."
"Overall, I rate Atlan as a ten out of ten."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time through automation."
"They also offer automated lineage embedded in the connectors, allowing us to track where the data is coming from and where it's going. We find it very efficient in cataloging data sources. Additionally, the user-friendly interface is a big plus, making it easy for users to familiarize themselves with the solution. These two features, in my opinion, stand out the most."
"Atlas is quite intuitive."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time."
"The AI part is integrated for enriching metadata engagement, making it a comprehensive tool."
"Overall, I rate Atlan a nine out of ten."
"The DLP part and the AI related ones are the most valuable features; I mostly appreciate their automated data discovery."
"The e-discovery search is useful."
"From my experience and customer feedback, one of the most valuable features of Microsoft Purview is ease of use, especially for content hosted within Microsoft 365 and Azure. I also like that the pricing model for the solution is reasonable."
"It is critical that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. That is the number one reason that people are adopting hybrid and best-of-the-breed approaches. Especially in banking, it is critical because people want to protect, govern, and secure their data. This is one of the first conversations that happens with security and the architecture group on the client side."
"One important feature is data security, which both end users and the organization seek."
"It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies."
"Overall, I would laud its ease of use, intuitive interface, and easy navigation."
"The product has helped us save both time and money."
 

Cons

"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"The challenge is in the lineage, where it requires improvement."
"Certain UI changes could make Atlan more user-friendly."
"The product could be improved by offering scheduled email reports for managed assets."
"One of the main areas for improvement is its governance capabilities. Atlan supports only basic out-of-the-box workflows, and it becomes challenging to customize features like how data owners should approve access to data assets."
"In my experience, it might be less suited for collaboration across teams."
"There are some improvements. There is a feature called Playbooks, which basically allows me to automate certain activities that would otherwise be manual. It's a very interesting feature, but there is room to improve it because, depending on the task you automate, the playbooks seem to have a hard time handling the task. So, it could be improved there. Even though it's a great feature, it can evolve further."
"It supports only a limited number of tools and technologies that pertain to Microsoft products. If you want to leverage other solutions such as Workday or Oracle Fusion, features will be coming up, but as of now, it is for the Microsoft suite."
"Purview's data connector platform for non-Microsoft data sources is good, but there is some functionality that hasn't been developed yet. There are some servers that it can't connect to yet, because they're still in a trial process."
"I lose a little bit of that control when we're talking about third-party connectors. Compliance-wise, I would like to see more ability to audit from a user perspective, where I could extrapolate what the user was thinking or trying to do."
"The current event-based retention management is very poor."
"Frequent daily updates from Microsoft can cause interface elements like buttons to appear and disappear, making navigation unpredictable."
"There should be more clarity about the costing, particularly how the cost is calculated, especially when utilizing health reports and quality features."
"Auto-tagging should be available at lower levels of licensing. Right now, a high level of licensing is needed for auto-tagging, and this feature should be made available at a lower license level."
"In my experience, Purview hasn't come far enough yet to help us reduce the number of solutions that interact with each other."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay per-user license. It's a different classification model than with other solutions, where they usually charge you for resources. So, that was a better model for us. And because of this difference in models or classification, it was cheaper for us to go with Atlan."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is not cheap."
"Licensing is frustrating due to multiple modules and licenses. The feature might be available in the console, but it won't work without the proper license, creating confusion."
"Some people find the tier licensing system complicated, but it offers a lot of value for money if we use the features."
"The price is reasonable because most of our clients already have an E3 license, which makes implementation easy."
"Microsoft Purview has a pay-per-use pricing model, so it's one of the most cost-effective tools, as your cost will be based on your usage. It's a pricing model that Microsoft has nailed down, making it great whether you're a small organization or a multinational, giant organization."
"I would rate the cost of Microsoft Purview a six out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Microsoft Purview is a subscription-based service, so we need either an E3 or E5 license to use it."
"Currently, the licensing differs for the governance side compared to the risk and compliance side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlan?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing cost is a bit flexible but not affordable for smaller organizations. It might be way out of their budget, but it is very ...
What needs improvement with Atlan?
Atlan can be improved by enhancing their support process by reducing the resolution time. They have really bad and incomplete documentation, so they should work on the documentation as well, especi...
What is your primary use case for Atlan?
My main use case for Atlan is to define a flexible set of metadata, including measuring the quality of said data. Atlan is also a partner of ours, so we use it to integrate with our own tool. It al...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Purview?
Microsoft Purview Data Governance is quite affordable compared to other market solutions, which have high initial costs. It allows for a cost-effective start with negligible initial cost. However, ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Purview?
The features in the actual data governance could be improved, and I think there is room for improvement in the product. We haven't used role-based access control in a complex way; it's somehow embe...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure Purview?
We are currently working with Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other Microsoft products. We are using Microsoft Purview Data Governance.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Purview, MS Azure Purview
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Atlan vs. Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.