# Alation vs Dust

> Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search.

- Alation: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #472 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json
- Dust: grade B, 62.8/100, rank #378 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/dust.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/dust.json

## Which one, for what

### Alation (C)

Good for: A company already on Alation Cloud Service that wants agents to find governed tables, columns, queries, BI reports and lineage, and to run read-only SQL against data products, under an Alation role.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 61 against 53
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 68

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form

### Dust (B)

Good for: A team that already works in Dust and wants an outside agent to search its spaces, read documents and call its agents with a user's own access.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 75 against 63
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 86 against 71

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Open source

Watch for: Programmatic usage has no free credits. It draws only on the workspace credit pool, which Free seats cannot use


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Alation | Dust | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 61 | 53 | Alation +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 75 | Alation +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 67 | Alation +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 75 | Dust +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 20 | Dust +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 86 | Dust +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 68 | Alation +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.3 · C** | **62.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Alation | Dust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | Permutation Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://dust.tt/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alation's Master Cloud Software Licence and Services Agreement. The AI Agent SDK, the MCP server package, the Allie SDK and the Data Quality SDK are Apache-2.0 | MIT for the platform's source at github.com/dust-tt/dust. The hosted service is sold under Dust's own terms. The npm page gives ISC for `@dust-tt/client` and MIT for `@dust-tt/dust-cli` |
| Tools exposed | 16 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 1.5k stars, 17k npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**Alation.** Each API has an OpenAPI 3.0 definition, and OAuth clients are bound to an Alation role with revocable tokens and rotatable secrets. Access needs a sales contract, since no price, trial or self-serve sign-up is published. The agent SDK and local MCP server have stayed at a release candidate since 14 January 2026.

**Dust.** The whole platform is MIT on GitHub, with a public OpenAPI document of 68 operations, llms.txt and a remote MCP server that acts with the signed-in user's access. API calls that run agents draw only on a paid workspace credit pool, and the terms of service could not be read.

## Before you call either

### Alation

1. Ask a Server Admin to register an OAuth client application with the lowest role that fits. Only admins can create one, and the secret is shown once
2. Pin `alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3`. An unpinned install resolves to 0.12.0, which predates the catalogue search agent
3. Call `catalog_context_search_agent` for catalogue questions. `alation_context` is deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly
4. Watch `X-Entitlement-Usage` on Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable
5. Page with `limit` and `skip` and follow `X-Next-Page`. The BI Source API uses `offset`, and one call returns at most 1,000 objects

### Dust

1. Use `https://eu.dust.tt` for a workspace in the EU region and `https://dust.tt` otherwise, for both the API and the MCP server
2. Connect an MCP client by OAuth and send the `resource` parameter in authorisation and token requests. API keys do not work on the MCP server
3. Expect HTTP 429 with type `rate_limit_error` when the credit pool, the programmatic monthly cap or the key's spend cap is exhausted. Retrying will not help
4. Call `GET /api/v1/w/{wId}/search` with `limit` (1 to 100, default 25) and `cursor`, or a data source view's search with `top_k`
5. Keep document upserts under 120 a minute per workspace

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Alation or Dust?

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

### Do Alation and Dust need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Alation and Dust without installing anything?

Alation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Dust has a hosted endpoint at https://dust.tt/mcp.

### Are Alation and Dust open source?

No open-source release is listed for Alation. Dust is open source (MIT for the platform's source at github.com/dust-tt/dust. The hosted service is sold under Dust's own terms. The npm page gives ISC for `@dust-tt/client` and MIT for `@dust-tt/dust-cli`).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "alation", "b": "dust"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare alation dust`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/dust.json

## Other comparisons with Alation or Dust

- [Alation vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north.md)
- [Alation vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.md)
- [Alation vs Guru](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-guru.md)
- [Alation vs Onyx](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.md)
- [Alation vs Overclock](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-overclock.md)
- [Atlan vs Dust](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-dust.md)
- [Cohere North vs Dust](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-dust.md)
- [Dust vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-glean.md)
- [Dust vs Guru](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-guru.md)
- [Dust vs Onyx](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-onyx.md)
- [Dust vs Overclock](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-overclock.md)
- [Alation vs Atlan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-atlan.md)
- [Alation vs DataHub](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-datahub.md)
- [Alation vs Marmot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-marmot.md)
- [Alation vs OpenMetadata](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.md)