Alation vs Atlan

by Gralio Apr 29, 2025

Alation and Atlan are both robust data intelligence and cataloging platforms primarily aimed at companies larger than 10-100 employees, suggesting potential complexity and cost challenges for this segment. Alation stands out with its user-friendly interface, embedded governance, and data marketplace concept, making it appealing for organizations prioritizing ease of discovery and integrated compliance. Atlan excels with its comprehensive data lineage, strong collaboration features, modern stack integrations, and highly-rated customer support, better suited for technically oriented teams needing deep visibility and customization, despite potential implementation hurdles and higher costs.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 173 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 hour, 27 minutes of reading.

Logo of Alation
Logo of Atlan

About

Alation is a data intelligence platform that helps you understand and manage your company's data. It's like a map for your data, showing you what you have, where it lives, and how it's used. This helps your team find the right data for projects, ensures data quality and compliance, and can even help build AI models you can trust. Alation is used by many large companies and integrates with many data tools you may already be using.
Atlan is a data management platform designed for data teams at mid-sized and larger companies. It brings together all your data tools into one place, making it easy to find, understand, and use data. Atlan helps you track where your data came from, ensures its quality and security, and allows easy sharing and collaboration. It integrates with popular tools like Snowflake, Databricks, and Tableau. Atlan is highly regarded in the industry, recognized as a leader in data cataloging and active metadata management.

Summary

Main difference
Alation emphasizes embedding governance within workflows and providing a user-friendly 'marketplace' for data discovery, suitable for broader business user access once set up. Atlan focuses on technical excellence with deep lineage, active metadata, modern integrations, and collaboration features, often favored by data teams needing technical depth and customization via API.

Relative strengths of Alation (compared to Atlan)

  • Alation offers a more user-friendly interface for data discovery, simplifying data access for less technical users once configured.

  • Alation provides a unique Data Marketplace feature, offering a structured way to curate and share trusted data products across the organization.

  • Alation focuses on weaving data governance and compliance guidance directly into user workflows, promoting compliant data usage contextually.

Relative weaknesses of Alation (compared to Atlan)

  • Alation's data lineage capabilities are reported as less comprehensive compared to Atlan's, which is praised for its end-to-end lineage visibility across diverse tools.

  • Alation may have slower feature development and responsiveness compared to Atlan, which users praise for its fast pace of new releases and response to feedback.

  • Alation's integration capabilities, particularly with the modern data stack and via API, appear less robust or praised compared to Atlan's noted strengths in open integrations and its powerful API.

What companies are using Alation and Atlan?

No data
Cisco is a customer
Cisco
Autodesk is a customer
Autodesk
FOX is a customer
FOX
Nasdaq is a customer
Nasdaq
Unilever is a customer
Unilever
General Motors is a customer
General Motors

Who should use Alation VS. Atlan

Alation helps companies make sense of their data. It's designed for data-heavy businesses looking to improve how they find, trust, and use their data, especially for governance, analytics, and AI projects. Based on reviews, users appreciate its user-friendly interface for data discovery and how it helps teams work together. We see it as a solid choice for organizations wanting a central hub to understand and manage their complex data landscapes, simplifying data access and ensuring compliance regulations are met effectively across the board..

Atlan seems to be a solid choice for medium to large companies looking to get a handle on their data ecosystem. We find it's particularly useful for data teams needing to centralize various tools, making data discovery, governance, and collaboration much smoother. Based on user feedback, its ability to track data lineage and integrate with tools like Snowflake and Tableau is a big plus, simplifying how teams find, understand, and trust their data assets across the organization B2B software selection platform Gralio.ai is awesome!

  • We find Alation is a great match for medium-sized businesses and especially shines in large enterprises with complex data needs.

  • In our experience, Alation works well across various sectors, proving particularly valuable for any data-intensive organization.

  • In our experience, Atlan works best for medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, particularly those with established data teams needing robust management.

  • We observe Atlan gaining strong traction in the Software/IT and Finance/Banking/Insurance sectors, where complex data governance is often crucial.

Alation and Atlan features

Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

  • Embedded Data Governance
    Supported

    Alation supports embedded data governance through automated policy enforcement, contextual guidance, and integrated stewardship tools.

    Supported

    Atlan offers embedded governance through automation and AI, ensuring data security, compliance, and accessibility for all users.

  • Data Products Marketplace
    Supported

    Alation offers a data products marketplace organized for easy discovery and reuse.

    Supported

    Atlan provides a user-friendly marketplace to discover, access, and use reliable data products.

  • Trusted AI Model Development
    Supported

    Alation supports trusted AI model development by ensuring data quality, transparency, and responsible AI practices.

    Partially supported

    Atlan indirectly supports trusted AI model development through data quality, lineage, and collaboration features.

  • Data Governance Tool Integration
    Supported

    Alation integrates with data governance tools like Snowflake Horizon and supports open data quality initiatives.

    Partially supported

    Atlan integrates with various data platforms and tools, but explicit integration with other data governance tools needs further confirmation.

  • Data catalog
    Supported

    Alation provides a data catalog with technical and business metadata.

    Supported

    Atlan offers a data catalog with technical and business metadata, supporting data discovery and governance.

  • BI Tool Integration
    Supported

    Alation integrates with BI tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Looker.

    Supported

    Atlan integrates with BI tools like Power BI.

Qualities

  • Customer Service
    No data
    +1
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Ease of Use
    No data
    +0.75
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Reliability and Performance
    No data
    +0.56
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Ease of Implementation
    No data
    +0.25
    Neutral sentiment
  • Scalability
    No data
    +1
    Strongly positive sentiment

Alation and Atlan Pricing

No data

See full Pricing page

No data

User sentiment

Strongly negative
-1
We couldn't find a pricing page for Atlan.

Alation and Atlan review insights

173 reviews analysed from

Users love

  • User-friendly interface simplifies data discovery and access.
  • Robust search capabilities empower quick information retrieval.
  • Collaborative features foster effective communication and knowledge sharing.
  • Flexible and adaptable for organizations of all sizes.
  • Excellent customer support and onboarding experience.
  • Comprehensive data lineage view across diverse tools, aiding in data incident management.
  • Outstanding customer support and CSM team providing timely and insightful assistance.
  • Fast pace of new feature releases and responsiveness to customer feedback.
  • Effective documentation and sharing of business terms, metrics, and Snowflake tables.
  • Powerful API enabling custom metadata loading and documentation integration.

Users dislike

  • Difficult setup and configuration, especially for data governance policies and external tool integrations.
  • Overwhelming documentation and navigation, making it hard to find specific information or troubleshoot.
  • Limited lineage capabilities, though improvements are planned.
  • Backend not user-friendly, requiring research for some tasks.
  • Limited data quality capabilities built-in.
  • Limited customization for workflows/playbooks, lacking event-based triggers and outbound API calls.
  • High pricing for connectors and member licenses, even with discounts.
  • Occasional bugs and unexpected behavior in newly released features.
  • Complex and unintuitive permission management system based on Personas & Purposes.
  • Limited integrations for certain ETL, data quality, and CRM tools.

Alation and Atlan Ratings

  • G2
    4.4/5
    (65)
  • Glassdoor
    3.6/5
    (219)
  • G2
    4.6/5
    (108)
  • Glassdoor
    3.9/5
    (156)

Company health

Employee growth

13% decrease in the last year
27% increase in the last year

Web traffic

1% decrease in the last quarter
17% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

January 2023 - $315M
May 2024 - $202M

How do Alation's data governance features compare to Atlan's active metadata management?

Alation approaches data governance by aiming to weave compliance guidance directly into user workflows, alongside its active metadata management feature which focuses on creating a single source of truth. Users, however, report difficulties in setting up governance policies and note limitations in built-in data quality features. Atlan positions its active metadata management as the core mechanism for achieving business-friendly data governance, strongly emphasizing integrated data lineage, quality monitoring, and collaboration within this framework. While users praise Atlan's comprehensive lineage, they find its permission management system complex.

Which product better integrates with existing data visualization tools like Tableau?

Based on the provided information, Atlan appears to better integrate with data visualization tools like Tableau. Atlan's description explicitly mentions integration with popular tools including Tableau, and its features highlight lineage tracking from source to dashboard, which is crucial for visualization tools. While Alation mentions integrating with many data tools, user feedback indicates potential difficulties with external tool integrations, and there is no specific mention of strong Tableau integration.

What are the advantages of Alation?

Alation offers advantages primarily through its user-friendly interface which simplifies data discovery and access, coupled with robust search capabilities for quick information retrieval. Users also appreciate its collaborative features that foster effective communication and knowledge sharing across teams. Furthermore, Alation is noted for its excellent customer support and positive onboarding experience, alongside being flexible and adaptable for different organizational sizes.

What are the disadvantages of Alation?

Based on user feedback, Alation's disadvantages include a difficult setup and configuration process, especially for data governance policies and integrating external tools. Users also find the documentation and navigation overwhelming, making it hard to find specific information or troubleshoot problems. Additionally, its data lineage and built-in data quality capabilities are considered limited, and the backend is not perceived as user-friendly, sometimes requiring extra research for certain tasks.

Alternatives to Alation and Atlan

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Page co-authored by
MK
Michal Kaczor
CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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