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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
12th
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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Atlan is 2.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 8.8%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Data Governance8.8%
Atlan2.0%
Other89.2%
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

"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."
"Atlan has positively impacted the organization since it helps in discovering already available assets, allowing for reduction of redundant ingestion of external data and reduction of time to market for any project."
"The technical support services are good."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time."
"The interfaces and automated imports have helped me with transparency, as we have different sources from different techniques such as DBT, Snowflake, and other regular databases, making it effective to connect these sources and navigate through them, filter them, and enrich the data with additional meter information."
"The AI part is integrated for enriching metadata engagement, making it a comprehensive tool."
"As a senior analytics engineer, Atlan's ability to show end-to-end data lineage is the most important feature for me."
"It gives you the opportunity to know your data and apply policies around it. If those policies are flouted, you can always track what's happening. You have options such as alerting the person who is committing that action, or you can take automatic action by blocking, for example, an email that is been sent externally. It's very useful."
"The availability of pre-designed policies tailored to specific geolocations and customer requirements is a valuable feature."
"Has a good interface and is reasonably priced."
"My favorite features are eDiscovery and insider risk management, because these are the major threats to an organization that can't be easily traced."
"It starts off with records management, insider risk management, and information protection. And there is the discovery of the clouds, and we can get analytics on that as well, so that we know which user is using which cloud application and for how much time. The Activity explorer tells us which user was transferring out what data at what moment and on which device, including the serial number."
"Microsoft Purview Data Governance enables us to show our compliance in real time."
"Microsoft Purview stands out for its automatic data recovery system, which prioritizes critical data for the fastest restoration."
"The data classification part of the solution is excellent, especially as it gives us an insight into our sensitive data within Microsoft 365."
 

Cons

"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."
"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"One of the main areas for improvement is its governance capabilities."
"In my experience, it might be less suited for collaboration across teams."
"Certain UI changes could make Atlan more user-friendly."
"Working with templates, Excel import, export, and running automations is not self-explanatory, and you always need help from Atlan support team."
"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."
"The challenge is in the lineage, where it requires improvement."
"The current event-based retention management is very poor."
"Some of the menu headings may not be easy to understand for some people."
"There are differences when looking at an incident in the M365 portal versus Purview, and the main one is the advanced hunting. In the M365 portal, you can write KQL queries and fetch data. If that was available in Purview, it would be very good."
"he one thing it doesn't do is data quality."
"One area for improvement is the detection of data types. This is really important."
"Privacy features should be integrated into the core product rather than offered as optional add-ons, as privacy is not a luxury but a fundamental requirement."
"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."
"If we could have a view something like we have in CrowdStrike—which is, I believe, the biggest competitor to Microsoft when it comes to security—a node nodal view, which we also have in Defender, that would make it a more complete, one-stop solution. That would save a lot of time for the admins and the engineers."
 

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."
"The solution is extremely affordable for the K-12 space."
"To get the full features of Purview, we currently need E5 enterprise licenses, which are expensive."
"I consider it cost-efficient because of the metrics it provides."
"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."
"Microsoft Purview requires a Microsoft 365 license and is included with an E5 license."
"Purview's price is pretty high when you factor in storage costs."
"The pricing is reasonable because it's part of the 365 E3 or E5 license you buy."
"Aside from the complexity of the pricing model, the price itself is realistic. Features like AI components and automatic classification require additional licenses. Still, anyone can start using Purview with a basic E3 license if they're using Microsoft 365 and grow with additional licenses as needed. Overall, we're satisfied with the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
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 Enterprise12
Large Enterprise33
 

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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.