Collibra vs Glean

Collibra

Each REST API has an OpenAPI 3.0 definition, the developer portal publishes llms.txt and Markdown pages, and every MCP tool carries read-only and destructive annotations. Access needs a sales contract, since no price, trial or self-serve sign-up is published, and no general API rate limit was found in the reviewed documentation.

Glean

Three public OpenAPI specs (Client, Indexing, Platform) regenerated almost daily, plus llms.txt and Markdown docs. No public price, trial or self-serve signup. Access starts with a demo request.

Collibra

1. Ask a Collibra administrator to register an OAuth application. Integration applications use client credentials, and MCP clients need a user application with a redirect URI
2. Reuse each access token for its 5 minutes. The token endpoint answers 429 once a client drains its pool of 100 tokens, refilled at 30 a minute
3. Page large reads with cursor= and sortField=ID. Cursor and offset parameters cannot be combined, and Search API limit plus offset cannot exceed 10,000
4. Keep Import API files to 10,000 assets or fewer and run at most 8 imports at once. Retry a job that fails on a concurrency error
5. Expect discover_data_assets and discover_business_glossary to consume Collibra Units and to need the dgc.ai-copilot permission. Use search_asset_keyword for free keyword search

Glean

1. Get the backend host from the Glean admin. APIs answer at https://<instance>-be.glean.com and MCP at that host under /mcp/<server-name>
2. Ask for a user-scoped token with only the scopes the task needs. A global token can impersonate whoever X-Glean-ActAs names
3. Keep chat under 0.5 calls a second and search under 5, and back off on 429
4. Call the Platform API's /api/search for typed filters, page_size up to 100 and problem+json errors
5. Send X-Glean-Exclude-Deprecated-After in tests to catch fields due for removal