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Head to head · Data catalogues · October 2026 research run

OpenMetadata vs Secoda

OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Secoda leads on transparency & trust. Both do data catalogues.

Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents · All 63 knowledge comparisons

OpenMetadataCollate, Inc. · Model platform B66.6/100#281 of 950 SecodaSecoda, Inc. · HTTP API E44.5/100#875 of 950

Which one, for what

OpenMetadata B

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 40
  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 85 against 44
  • Security & auth, 65 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 89 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The 16 default tools take about 50,000 characters of definitions, 12,285 of them for search_metadata alone

Secoda E

Good for A data team already on Secoda that wants an agent to read and edit catalogue metadata, lineage, documents and glossary terms, or to search the catalogue and run SQL through the local MCP server.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 51

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • No incidents deducted, where OpenMetadata loses 4 points for them

Watch for

No price is published. The three plans (Core, Premium, Enterprise) link to a sales form, and no trial or sign-up button was found on the site

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpenMetadataSecodaEdge
Reliability16%208440OpenMetadata +44
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28559OpenMetadata +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.28544OpenMetadata +41
Security & auth14%17.56554OpenMetadata +11
Payments & pricing10%12.5200OpenMetadata +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88960OpenMetadata +29
Transparency & trust7%8.85158Secoda +7
Negative events≤15-40
Total66.6 · B44.5 · E

Facts side by side

FactOpenMetadataSecoda
KindModel platformHTTP API
VendorCollate, Inc.Secoda, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceApache-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 closedProprietary service under the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MIT
Tools exposed166
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.open-metadata/openmetadata-mcpnot listed
Last release2026-09-292026-10-06
Terms last updated2022-08-29no date given
Privacy policy last updated2022-08-24no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity15k stars, 41k PyPI/wk1 stars
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

Verdicts

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.

Secoda

The REST API reference embeds OpenAPI 3.0 definitions on every page, with llms.txt and Markdown copies, and the subscription agreement carries a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment. No price, trial or sign-up is published, no status page was found, and the public changelog stops at 28 October 2025 although self-hosted releases continue.

Before you call either

OpenMetadata

  1. Set entityType for data-quality questions. testCase and testSuite are outside the default search scope
  2. Match a table's tests on originEntityFQN, not entityFQN. Column-level tests store the column's FQN there
  3. Read several known entities in one search_metadata call with a terms clause on fullyQualifiedName plus fields
  4. Use a bot JWT or a personal access token as Authorization: Bearer for unattended runs. OAuth needs a browser sign-in
  5. 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

Secoda

  1. Pick the base URL by workspace region. app.secoda.co uses api.secoda.co, eu.secoda.co uses eapi.secoda.co and apac.secoda.co uses aapi.secoda.co
  2. Keep writes under 30 PUT, PATCH or POST calls a minute on entity endpoints, and back off on a 429
  3. List with /api/v1/resource/catalog and a URL-encoded JSON filter. The per-type list endpoints for tables are marked deprecated, and results stop at 10,000 resources
  4. Send at most 100 entities to /api/v1/resource/all/bulk_update/ in one request
  5. Add a trailing slash when an endpoint does not behave as expected, as the docs advise
  6. Treat an API key as the creating user. run_sql in the MCP server works only when an admin has enabled Run SQL and the user has query access to the integration

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, OpenMetadata or Secoda?

OpenMetadata scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Secoda leads on transparency & trust.

Can an agent call OpenMetadata and Secoda without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for OpenMetadata. Secoda runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

Are OpenMetadata and Secoda open source?

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). No open-source release is listed for Secoda.

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