Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run
Alation vs Guru
Alation scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Guru's 45.1 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search.
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 48
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 48
- Security & auth, 63 against 52
- Maintenance & community, 71 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 59
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
Guru E
Good for Companies already running Guru that want agents to answer from verified cards with each user's permissions, and to draft card changes.
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Alation | Guru | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 61 | 48 | Alation +13 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 78 | 58 | Alation +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 71 | 48 | Alation +23 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 52 | Alation +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 0 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 71 | 46 | Alation +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 76 | 59 | Alation +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 60.3 · C | 45.1 · E |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Alation | Guru |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | Guru Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| 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 | Proprietary hosted service under Guru's terms of service. The Python SDK (guruhq/guru-py-sdk) is MIT, and the MCP server's public repository holds only a README and server.json |
| Tools exposed | 16 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | com.getguru/mcp-server |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | none |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-03-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-08-19 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |
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.
Guru
Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp, registered as com.getguru/mcp-server in the official MCP registry. No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales.
Before you call either
Alation
- 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
- Pin
alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3. An unpinned install resolves to 0.12.0, which predates the catalogue search agent - Call
catalog_context_search_agentfor catalogue questions.alation_contextis deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly - Watch
X-Entitlement-Usageon Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable - Page with
limitandskipand followX-Next-Page. The BI Source API usesoffset, and one call returns at most 1,000 objects
Guru
- Ask the person for a Guru account. There's no trial or keyless route, and OAuth needs a pre-approved client
- Send
Authorization: Bearer email:tokento the MCP server when OAuth isn't available, and basic auth to https://api.getguru.com/api/v1/ - Use a collection token for read-only work. User tokens write with the user's full rights
- Follow the
Linkheader to page REST search results. Each page holds at most 50 cards - Confirm with a person before archiving or moving cards. Guru documents no confirmation step
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Alation or Guru?
Alation scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Guru's 45.1 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do Alation and Guru need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Alation and Guru without installing anything?
Alation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Guru has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp.
Other comparisons with Alation or Guru
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/alation-vs-guru.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/alation.json·/api/v1/tools/guru.json - From a terminal
anchor compare alation guru(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "alation", "b": "guru"}at/mcp, no key