{ "data": { "a": { "slug": "alation", "name": "Alation", "vendor": "Alation, Inc.", "vendorUrl": "https://www.alation.com", "kind": "http-api", "category": "company-knowledge", "summary": "Alation is a hosted data catalogue for tables, queries, BI reports, lineage and data quality. Agents reach it through REST APIs, a natural-language Aggregated Context API, a Python agent SDK and an MCP server on each cloud instance.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json", "repo": "https://github.com/Alation/alation-ai-agent-sdk", "license": "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", "transports": [ "http", "streamable-http", "stdio" ], "packages": [ { "registry": "pypi", "name": "alation-ai-agent-mcp" }, { "registry": "pypi", "name": "alation-ai-agent-sdk" }, { "registry": "pypi", "name": "allie-sdk" } ], "auth": "mixed", "authNotes": "Access is granted inside a customer's Alation instance. On Alation Cloud Service a Server Admin registers an OAuth client application, which creates a system user with one Alation role, and the client exchanges its ID and secret for a JWT sent as a Bearer token. An authorisation code flow with refresh tokens covers user sign-in, and the remote MCP server needs a client that accepts a `client_id` and `client_secret`, since dynamic client registration is not supported. Any signed-in user can also create an API key pair, a refresh token (60 days by default) and an access token (24 hours) sent in a `TOKEN` header. Permissions follow the user's role, as listed in the APIs by Roles table.", "pricing": "paid", "pricingNotes": "No prices are published. www.alation.com/pricing redirects to a form for a sales call, and we found no trial or self-serve sign-up. Each cloud tenant gets a one-time allowance of 2,000 Aggregated Context API calls, with 429 responses from 2,400 calls until a paid tier is bought through the account manager (checked 2026-10-08).", "priceSummary": "Paid", "where": "local", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "No x402, MPP or L402 in the developer portal, the agent SDK source or the legal pages (checked 2026-10-08).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": 16, "popularity": { "githubStars": 19, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": 2087, "asOf": "2026-10-08" }, "docsUrl": "https://developer.alation.com/", "capabilities": [ "data.catalogue", "knowledge.search", "data.lineage", "db.sql" ], "tags": [ "hosted", "closed-source", "enterprise", "official", "mcp", "oauth", "openapi", "python", "sales-led", "status-page", "sla", "soc2" ], "lastRelease": "2026-10-03", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 60.3, "grade": "C", "agentReady": false, "rank": 472, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 7, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 71, "maintenance": 71, "payments": 0, "reliability": 61, "schema": 78, "security": 63, "transparency": 76 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-08" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "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.", "bestFor": "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.", "strengths": [ "OpenAPI 3.0 definitions for each API, shown on every reference page and served by each instance under `/openapi/`", "OAuth 2.0 client credentials tied to a system user with one Alation role, with token revocation, secret rotation and offline JWT verification", "The AI API answers 429 with `Retry-After` and three `Ai-RateLimit` headers, and the REST 429 body states the seconds to wait", "The local MCP server enables 8 of its 16 tools by default, with allow and deny lists, and the remote server lists only tools the user may call", "A 99.5 per cent monthly uptime target with service credits of 1 to 5 per cent in the published MSA" ], "weaknesses": [ "No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form", "Four incidents between 10 August and 10 September 2026, two of them regional outages longer than an hour", "`alation-ai-agent-sdk` and `alation-ai-agent-mcp` were last published on 14 January 2026 as 1.0.0rc3, and a plain `pip install` still resolves to 0.12.0", "No guidance on prompt injection, although tools return catalogue descriptions, documents and query text written by users", "No `security.txt` and no bug bounty, and security advisories sit behind a Community login" ], "agentNotes": [ "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_agent` for catalogue questions. `alation_context` is deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly", "Watch `X-Entitlement-Usage` on Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable", "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" ], "metrics": { "kind": "remote", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 0, "avgRating": 0, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "C", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 60.3 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 71, "maintenance": 71, "payments": 0, "reliability": 61, "schema": 78, "security": 63, "transparency": 65 }, "provenanceScore": 86 }, "connect": { "install": "uv pip install alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3", "config": { "mcpServers": { "alation": { "args": [ "--from", "alation-ai-agent-mcp", "start-alation-mcp-server" ], "command": "uvx", "env": { "ALATION_AUTH_METHOD": "service_account", "ALATION_BASE_URL": "https://your-alation-instance.com", "ALATION_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id", "ALATION_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret" } } } } }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/data.catalogue", "tool": "https://letme.dev/alation" }, "area": "business", "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Alation, Inc.", "domain": "alation.com", "domainRegistered": "1998-07-27", "endpointOnVendorDomain": true, "terms": "https://www.alation.com/legal/msa/", "privacy": "https://www.alation.com/legal/privacy-policy/", "statusPage": "https://status.alationcloud.com", "changelog": "https://developer.alation.com/dev/docs/running-api-release-notes", "securityTxt": "none", "checked": "2026-10-08", "notes": [ "The MSA (version 10 April 2026) and the privacy policy (version 23 September 2026) name Alation, Inc., 3 Lagoon Drive, Suite 300, Redwood City, CA 94065. The MSA is governed by Delaware law, or by the law of England and Wales for customers in the UK, EEA and Switzerland.", "Cloud instances and the status page are on alationcloud.com, a second domain of the vendor's. The agent SDK's guides give `your-instance.alationcloud.com` as the instance host.", "www.alation.com/.well-known/security.txt returns 404. The security page sends reports to security@alation.com.", "The privacy policy covers Alation websites and other Alation services. Customer personal data in the product is governed by the Data Privacy Addendum of 10 April 2026 at https://www.alation.com/legal/online-dpa/.", "RDAP gives alation.com a registration date of 1998-07-27. We did not establish when Alation acquired the domain." ], "score": 86 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.json", "live": { "slug": "alation", "vendorStatus": { "page": "https://status.alationcloud.com", "indicator": "maintenance", "summary": "Service Under Maintenance", "checkedAt": "2026-10-09T09:24:52.892681394Z" }, "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T09:24:52.892681394Z" } }, "answer": "OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust.", "b": { "slug": "openmetadata", "name": "OpenMetadata", "vendor": "Collate, Inc.", "vendorUrl": "https://open-metadata.org", "kind": "platform", "category": "company-knowledge", "summary": "Open-source data catalogue for discovery, lineage, data quality and governance, with connectors to external data systems.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/openmetadata.json", "repo": "https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata", "license": "Apache-2.0 for the platform. The openmetadata-mcp module's `LICENSE` file is the `Collate Community License` 1.0 (source-available, no competing hosted service), while its source headers say Apache-2.0. Collate's hosted service is closed", "transports": [ "http", "streamable-http" ], "packages": [ { "registry": "oci", "name": "docker.getcollate.io/openmetadata/server" }, { "registry": "pypi", "name": "openmetadata-ingestion" } ], "auth": "mixed", "authNotes": "The MCP endpoint at https://\u003chost\u003e/mcp takes OAuth 2.0 with PKCE and dynamic client registration through the instance's configured SSO (Google, Okta, Azure AD, Auth0, Cognito, custom OIDC, LDAP, SAML) or basic auth, with 1-hour access tokens and 7-day refresh tokens that rotate. It also takes a personal access token (per user, configurable expiry, not for bots) or a bot JWT as `Authorization: Bearer`. Every tool runs with the caller's roles and policies, and tokens have no scopes of their own. Registration is limited to 10 an hour and the token endpoint to 30 a minute per IP.", "pricing": "freemium", "pricingNotes": "OpenMetadata is Apache-2.0 and free to self-host, MCP included. Collate, the hosted version, has a Free plan with no card (5 users, 500 data assets, multi-tenant, email support, clusters reclaimed after 4 weeks without a login) that leaves MCP out. Premium (25 users, 5,000 assets, SSO) and Enterprise (50+ users, 10,000+ assets, audit logs, MCP) are contact sales, and so is the Collate AI add-on (checked 2026-10-03).", "priceSummary": "Freemium", "where": "local", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, Collate's pricing page or the MCP module source (checked 2026-10-03).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": 16, "popularity": { "githubStars": 15100, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": 40906, "asOf": "2026-10-03" }, "docsUrl": "https://docs.open-metadata.org/how-to-guides/mcp", "llmsTxt": "https://docs.open-metadata.org/llms.txt", "registryName": "io.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcp", "capabilities": [ "data.catalogue", "data.lineage", "work.docs" ], "tags": [ "open-source", "source-available", "self-hosted", "hosted", "mcp", "oauth", "annotations", "llms-txt", "python", "java", "docker", "freemium", "free-tier", "no-card", "enterprise" ], "lastRelease": "2026-09-29", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 66.6, "grade": "B", "agentReady": false, "rank": 261, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 2, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 85, "maintenance": 89, "payments": 20, "reliability": 84, "schema": 85, "security": 65, "transparency": 51 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-03" }, "negative": -4, "negativeNotes": [ "2026-01-07 to 2026-05-14. Three advisories in 2026, all fixed and published. GHSA-5f29-2333-h9c7 (critical, 7 January, server-side template injection in FreeMarker email templates leading to code execution), CVE-2026-26010 (7.6, 11 February, bot JWTs exposed through /api/v1/ingestionPipelines to any read-only user, every version before 1.11.8) and CVE-2026-46481 (8.3, 14 May, TEST_CONNECTION returned the ingestion-bot JWT and a database password to non-admin users on 1.12.1, fixed in 1.12.4). Two exposed the bot tokens the docs suggest for unattended agents. Fixed, so decayed, -4 (https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/security/advisories)" ], "verdict": "MCP built into every instance at /mcp and on by default since 2.0, with nothing extra to install. The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone.", "bestFor": "Teams running OpenMetadata who want agents to search the catalogue, read lineage and data-quality results, find root causes and create tests or lineage under the user's own permissions.", "strengths": [ "MCP built into every instance at /mcp and on by default since 2.0, with nothing extra to install", "OAuth 2.0 with PKCE and dynamic client registration through the instance's own SSO or basic auth, 1-hour access tokens and rotating 7-day refresh tokens, plus personal access tokens and bot JWTs", "Every tool carries readOnlyHint and destructiveHint, and descriptions say when to choose one tool over another and warn where an answer can be silently wrong", "Each MCP call is recorded in the instance's database with tool, user, success, latency, error category and client name", "2.0.3 on 29 September 2026, at least eight releases since 27 July, and integration tests passing on main" ], "weaknesses": [ "The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone", "Three advisories in 2026, a critical template injection and two leaks of bot JWTs to low-privilege users", "An open report from 2 October 2026 says get_entity_details returns service connections (host, user, the stored password field) that the REST API masks, and we found no masking step in the MCP read path", "`openmetadata-mcp/LICENSE` is the `Collate Community License` 1.0, which bars competing hosted services, while the module's source headers and the README say Apache-2.0", "Write tools are always listed with no read-only switch, `queryFilter` takes raw OpenSearch DSL as a string, and the docs' openapi.json is a placeholder Plant Store spec" ], "agentNotes": [ "Set `entityType` for data-quality questions. testCase and testSuite are outside the default search scope", "Match a table's tests on `originEntityFQN`, not `entityFQN`. Column-level tests store the column's FQN there", "Read several known entities in one `search_metadata` call with a `terms` clause on `fullyQualifiedName` plus `fields`", "Use a bot JWT or a personal access token as `Authorization: Bearer` for unattended runs. OAuth needs a browser sign-in", "Call sparql_query, entity_neighborhood, find_by_tag or shacl_validate only if tools/list shows them. They appear only when the operator enabled RDF" ], "metrics": { "kind": "local", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 2, "avgRating": 3, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "B", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 66.6 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 85, "maintenance": 89, "payments": 20, "reliability": 84, "schema": 85, "security": 65, "transparency": 51 }, "provenanceScore": 50 }, "connect": { "install": "curl -sL -o docker-compose.yml https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/releases/download/2.0.2-release/docker-compose.yml\ndocker compose -f docker-compose.yml up --detach", "claudeCode": "claude mcp add --transport http openmetadata https://\u003cYOUR-OpenMetadata-SERVER\u003e/mcp", "config": { "mcpServers": { "openmetadata": { "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer \u003cYOUR-OpenMetadata-PAT\u003e" }, "type": "http", "url": "https://\u003cYOUR-OpenMetadata-SERVER\u003e/mcp" } } } }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/data.catalogue", "tool": "https://letme.dev/openmetadata" }, "area": "business", "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Collate, Inc.", "domain": "open-metadata.org", "domainRegistered": "", "endpointOnVendorDomain": null, "terms": "https://www.getcollate.io/terms", "privacy": "https://www.getcollate.io/privacypolicy", "statusPage": "", "changelog": "https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/releases", "securityTxt": "none", "checked": "2026-10-03", "notes": [ "Collate, Inc. of 200 Middlefield Rd Suite 110, Menlo Park, California runs OpenMetadata and sells it hosted as Collate. The getcollate.io footer reads Copyright 2026 Collate.", "The privacy policy (24 August 2022) and terms (29 August 2022) are Collate's and cover the SaaS service. The terms say the service is hosted in the United States.", "There's no shared hosted MCP endpoint. Each instance serves /mcp on its own host, and the official MCP registry entry uses a host template.", "open-metadata.org/.well-known/security.txt and getcollate.io/.well-known/security.txt return 404. SECURITY.md routes reports through GitHub security advisories.", "status.getcollate.io doesn't resolve, and we found no status page linked from getcollate.io. The trust centre at trustcenter.getcollate.io refused our reader." ], "score": 50 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata.json", "live": { "slug": "openmetadata", "versions": [ { "registry": "github", "name": "open-metadata/OpenMetadata", "version": "2.0.4-release", "released": "2026-10-06", "seenAt": "2026-10-08T16:24:13.863954232Z" }, { "registry": "mcp-registry", "name": "io.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcp", "version": "1.1.1", "seenAt": "2026-10-09T02:57:46.004536428Z" }, { "registry": "pypi", "name": "openmetadata-ingestion", "version": "2.0.5.0", "released": "2026-10-08", "seenAt": "2026-10-08T16:24:13.735460492Z" } ], "githubStars": 15416, "pypiWeekly": 38460, "securityTxt": { "url": "https://open-metadata.org/.well-known/security.txt", "state": "none", "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T15:38:50.548546899Z" }, "llmsTxt": { "url": "https://docs.open-metadata.org/llms.txt", "ok": true, "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T14:00:43.609764724Z" }, "domain": { "domain": "open-metadata.org", "registered": "2021-03-04", "source": "https://rdap.publicinterestregistry.org/rdap/domain/open-metadata.org", "checkedAt": "2026-10-04T13:10:48.09767443Z" }, "pages": [ { "url": "https://www.getcollate.io/privacypolicy", "kind": "privacy", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:27:54.114892441Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "6457fe7f957a" }, { "url": "https://www.getcollate.io/terms", "kind": "terms", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:27:56.636943242Z", "changedAt": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z", "fingerprint": "dee7018248ab" } ], "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T02:57:46.004536428Z" } }, "facts": [ { "a": "HTTP API", "b": "Model platform", "name": "Kind" }, { "a": "Alation, Inc.", "b": "Collate, Inc.", "name": "Vendor" }, { "a": "no (local only)", "b": "no (local only)", "name": "Hosted endpoint" }, { "a": "HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio", "b": "HTTP, Streamable HTTP", "name": "Transports" }, { "a": "OAuth or key", "b": "OAuth or key", "name": "Auth" }, { "a": "Paid", "b": "Freemium", "name": "Pricing" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "x402" }, { "a": "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", "b": "Apache-2.0 for the platform. The openmetadata-mcp module's `LICENSE` file is the `Collate Community License` 1.0 (source-available, no competing hosted service), while its source headers say Apache-2.0. Collate's hosted service is closed", "name": "Licence" }, { "a": "16", "b": "16", "name": "Tools exposed" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "Read-only variant documented" }, { "a": "no", "b": "yes", "name": "llms.txt" }, { "a": "not listed", "b": "io.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcp", "name": "MCP registry" }, { "a": "2026-10-03", "b": "2026-09-29", "name": "Last release" }, { "a": "no date given", "b": "2022-08-29", "name": "Terms last updated" }, { "a": "no date given", "b": "2022-08-24", "name": "Privacy policy last updated" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Customer content may train models" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "yes", "name": "Terms restrict automated access" }, { "a": "yes", "b": "yes", "name": "Terms restrict benchmarking" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "yes", "name": "Terms or service can change without notice" }, { "a": "not found in the text", "b": "yes", "name": "Arbitration or class-action waiver" }, { "a": "19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk", "b": "15k stars, 41k PyPI/wk", "name": "Popularity" }, { "a": "none", "b": "3/5 (2)", "name": "Agent reviews" } ], "faq": [ { "answer": "OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust.", "question": "Which is better for AI agents, Alation or OpenMetadata?" }, { "answer": "Alation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for OpenMetadata.", "question": "Can an agent call Alation and OpenMetadata without installing anything?" }, { "answer": "No open-source release is listed for Alation. OpenMetadata is open source (Apache-2.0 for the platform. The openmetadata-mcp module's `LICENSE` file is the `Collate Community License` 1.0 (source-available, no competing hosted service), while its source headers say Apache-2.0. Collate's hosted service is closed).", "question": "Are Alation and OpenMetadata open source?" } ], "goodFor": [ { "aheadOn": [ "Transparency \u0026 trust, 76 against 51" ], "also": [ "Runs on your own machine", "No incidents deducted, where OpenMetadata loses 4 points for them" ], "goodFor": "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.", "slug": "alation", "watchFor": "No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form" }, { "aheadOn": [ "Reliability, 84 against 61", "Schema \u0026 documentation, 85 against 78", "Agent ergonomics, 85 against 71", "Payments \u0026 pricing, 20 against 0", "Maintenance \u0026 community, 89 against 71" ], "also": [ "Free to start without a card", "Open source" ], "goodFor": "Teams running OpenMetadata who want agents to search the catalogue, read lineage and data-quality results, find root causes and create tests or lineage under the user's own permissions.", "slug": "openmetadata", "watchFor": "The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone" } ], "job": { "capability": "data.catalogue", "name": "Data catalogues" }, "others": [ { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north.json", "title": "Alation vs Cohere North", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.json", "title": "Alation vs Dust", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.json", "title": "Alation vs Glean", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-guru.json", "title": "Alation vs Guru", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-guru" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.json", "title": "Alation vs Onyx", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-overclock.json", "title": "Alation vs Overclock", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-overclock" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-atlan.json", "title": "Alation vs Atlan", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-atlan" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-datahub.json", "title": "Alation vs DataHub", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-datahub" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-marmot.json", "title": "Alation vs Marmot", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-marmot" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-openmetadata.json", "title": "Atlan vs OpenMetadata", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-openmetadata" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datahub-vs-openmetadata.json", "title": "DataHub vs OpenMetadata", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datahub-vs-openmetadata" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/marmot-vs-openmetadata.json", "title": "Marmot vs OpenMetadata", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/marmot-vs-openmetadata" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-openmetadata.json", "title": "Guru vs OpenMetadata", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-openmetadata" } ], "scores": [ { "alation": 61, "by": 23, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "reliability", "name": "Reliability", "openmetadata": 84, "weight": 16 }, { "key": "performance", "name": "Performance", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "alation": 78, "by": 7, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "schema", "name": "Schema \u0026 documentation", "openmetadata": 85, "weight": 13 }, { "alation": 71, "by": 14, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "ergonomics", "name": "Agent ergonomics", "openmetadata": 85, "weight": 13 }, { "alation": 63, "by": 2, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "security", "name": "Security \u0026 auth", "openmetadata": 65, "weight": 14 }, { "alation": 0, "by": 20, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "payments", "name": "Payments \u0026 pricing", "openmetadata": 20, "weight": 10 }, { "key": "tasks", "name": "Task success", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "alation": 71, "by": 18, "edge": "openmetadata", "key": "maintenance", "name": "Maintenance \u0026 community", "openmetadata": 89, "weight": 7 }, { "alation": 76, "by": 25, "edge": "alation", "key": "transparency", "name": "Transparency \u0026 trust", "openmetadata": 51, "weight": 7 } ], "summary": "OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust. Both do data catalogues.", "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.", "openmetadata": "MCP built into every instance at /mcp and on by default since 2.0, with nothing extra to install. The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone." } }, "kind": "anchor.page", "links": { "api": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json", "html": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata", "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.json", "llms": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt", "markdown": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.md", "slim": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.min.md" }, "markdown": "OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust. Both do data catalogues.\n\n- 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\n- OpenMetadata: grade B, 66.6/100, rank #261 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/openmetadata.json\n\n## Which one, for what\n\n### Alation (C)\n\nGood 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.\n\nAhead on:\n- Transparency \u0026 trust, 76 against 51\n\nAlso in its favour:\n- Runs on your own machine\n- No incidents deducted, where OpenMetadata loses 4 points for them\n\nWatch for: No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form\n\n### OpenMetadata (B)\n\nGood for: Teams running OpenMetadata who want agents to search the catalogue, read lineage and data-quality results, find root causes and create tests or lineage under the user's own permissions.\n\nAhead on:\n- Reliability, 84 against 61\n- Schema \u0026 documentation, 85 against 78\n- Agent ergonomics, 85 against 71\n- Payments \u0026 pricing, 20 against 0\n- Maintenance \u0026 community, 89 against 71\n\nAlso in its favour:\n- Free to start without a card\n- Open source\n\nWatch for: The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone\n\n\n## Score by category\n\n| Category | Weight | Alation | OpenMetadata | Edge |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 61 | 84 | OpenMetadata +23 |\n| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Schema \u0026 documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 85 | OpenMetadata +7 |\n| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 85 | OpenMetadata +14 |\n| Security \u0026 auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 65 | OpenMetadata +2 |\n| Payments \u0026 pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 20 | OpenMetadata +20 |\n| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Maintenance \u0026 community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 89 | OpenMetadata +18 |\n| Transparency \u0026 trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 51 | Alation +25 |\n| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |\n| **Total** | | **60.3 · C** | **66.6 · B** | |\n\n## Facts side by side\n\n| Fact | Alation | OpenMetadata |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |\n| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | Collate, Inc. |\n| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |\n| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |\n| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |\n| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |\n| x402 | no | no |\n| 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 | Apache-2.0 for the platform. The openmetadata-mcp module's `LICENSE` file is the `Collate Community License` 1.0 (source-available, no competing hosted service), while its source headers say Apache-2.0. Collate's hosted service is closed |\n| Tools exposed | 16 | 16 |\n| Read-only variant documented | no | no |\n| llms.txt | no | yes |\n| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcp` |\n| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-09-29 |\n| Terms last updated | no date given | 2022-08-29 |\n| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2022-08-24 |\n| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |\n| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |\n| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |\n| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |\n| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |\n| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 15k stars, 41k PyPI/wk |\n| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |\n\n## Verdicts\n\n**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.\n\n**OpenMetadata.** MCP built into every instance at /mcp and on by default since 2.0, with nothing extra to install. The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone.\n\n## Before you call either\n\n### Alation\n\n1. 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\n2. Pin `alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3`. An unpinned install resolves to 0.12.0, which predates the catalogue search agent\n3. Call `catalog_context_search_agent` for catalogue questions. `alation_context` is deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly\n4. Watch `X-Entitlement-Usage` on Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable\n5. 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\n\n### OpenMetadata\n\n1. Set `entityType` for data-quality questions. testCase and testSuite are outside the default search scope\n2. Match a table's tests on `originEntityFQN`, not `entityFQN`. Column-level tests store the column's FQN there\n3. Read several known entities in one `search_metadata` call with a `terms` clause on `fullyQualifiedName` plus `fields`\n4. Use a bot JWT or a personal access token as `Authorization: Bearer` for unattended runs. OAuth needs a browser sign-in\n5. Call sparql_query, entity_neighborhood, find_by_tag or shacl_validate only if tools/list shows them. They appear only when the operator enabled RDF\n\n## Questions\n\n### Which is better for AI agents, Alation or OpenMetadata?\n\nOpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust.\n\n### Can an agent call Alation and OpenMetadata without installing anything?\n\nAlation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for OpenMetadata.\n\n### Are Alation and OpenMetadata open source?\n\nNo open-source release is listed for Alation. OpenMetadata is open source (Apache-2.0 for the platform. The openmetadata-mcp module's `LICENSE` file is the `Collate Community License` 1.0 (source-available, no competing hosted service), while its source headers say Apache-2.0. Collate's hosted service is closed).\n\n\n## For agents\n\n- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.min.md\n- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {\"a\": \"alation\", \"b\": \"openmetadata\"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare alation openmetadata`\n- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/openmetadata.json\n\n## Other comparisons with Alation or OpenMetadata\n\n- [Alation vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north.md)\n- [Alation vs Dust](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.md)\n- [Alation vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.md)\n- [Alation vs Guru](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-guru.md)\n- [Alation vs Onyx](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.md)\n- [Alation vs Overclock](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-overclock.md)\n- [Alation vs Atlan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-atlan.md)\n- [Alation vs DataHub](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-datahub.md)\n- [Alation vs Marmot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-marmot.md)\n- [Atlan vs OpenMetadata](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-openmetadata.md)\n- [DataHub vs OpenMetadata](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datahub-vs-openmetadata.md)\n- [Marmot vs OpenMetadata](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/marmot-vs-openmetadata.md)\n- [Guru vs OpenMetadata](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-openmetadata.md)\n", "meta": { "attribution": "Anchor Terminal (https://www.anchorterminal.com)", "docs": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/docs/", "generatedAt": "2026-10-09", "license": "CC-BY-4.0", "method": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/", "methodology": "0.4", "openapi": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/openapi.json", "preview": false, "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run" }, "page": { "breadcrumbs": [ { "name": "Home", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/" }, { "name": "Compare", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/" }, { "name": "Alation vs OpenMetadata", "url": "" } ], "description": "OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency \u0026 trust. Both do data catalogues. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.", "facts": [ "Alation C 60.3", "OpenMetadata B 66.6", "scores" ], "h1": "Alation vs OpenMetadata", "image": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/assets/og/compare-alation-vs-openmetadata.png", "path": "/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata", "published": "2026-10-01", "section": "tools", "title": "Alation vs OpenMetadata for AI agents, C 60.3 vs B 66.6", "toc": null, "updated": "2026-10-09", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata" }, "tokens": { "markdown": 2300, "slim": 830 }, "version": 1 }