# Alation vs OpenMetadata (slim)

> 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 & trust. Both do data catalogues. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.md (~2,300 tokens) · this version ~830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-openmetadata
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

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 & trust. Both do data catalogues.

- Alation: C 60.3, rank #472 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.min.md
- OpenMetadata: B 66.6, rank #261 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openmetadata.min.md
- Alation, 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 Transparency & trust, 76 against 51. Also Runs on your own machine; No incidents deducted, where OpenMetadata loses 4 points for them.
- OpenMetadata, good 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. Ahead on Reliability, 84 against 61; Schema & documentation, 85 against 78; Agent ergonomics, 85 against 71; Payments & pricing, 20 against 0; Maintenance & community, 89 against 71. Also Free to start without a card; Open source.

| Category | Alation | OpenMetadata |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 61 | 84 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 78 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 71 | 85 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 63 | 65 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 71 | 89 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 76 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Alation | OpenMetadata |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | Collate, Inc. |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| 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 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2022-08-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2022-08-24 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 15k stars, 41k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |