Castor vs Atlan : Full Product Comparison
Read our Castor vs Atlan product comparison to learn about the unique features each have to offer and decide which Data Catalog might suit your business best.
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You may be here because you’re actively shopping for a data catalog, because you’re beginning your documentation and governance journey, or simply because you’re really into data and technology (hey, we respect that - we are too!).
Castor and Atlan are two popular data catalogs in the market, so you may be wondering: how do they stack up? In this article, we’ll give a detailed comparison of the two platforms by looking at their key features, technology integrations, target audience, pricing, ratings, and ease of use.
Whether you're an analyst, a data scientist, or a business user, this comparison will give you a comprehensive understanding of what each data catalog has to offer and will help you make an informed decision.
Let’s start with the basics. If you’re wondering what a data catalog IS, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a brief explanation, according to Gartner:
“A data catalog creates and maintains an inventory of data assets through the discovery, description, and organization of distributed datasets. The data catalog provides context to enable data stewards, data/business analysts, data engineers, data scientists and other data consumers to find and understand relevant datasets for the purpose of extracting business value.”
Gartner – Augmented Data Catalogs 2019
Data catalogs play a crucial role in managing and organizing large datasets for organizations. In recent years, there has been a growing demand for data discovery to help companies find, understand, and use their data across ever-increasing data platforms and systems. And as you think about your data catalog needs, there’s a wide data catalog landscape to choose from, and vendor comparisons can help you make the right choice based on your organization’s needs.
We have kept our process as unbiased as possible. Our approach analyzed Atlan vs Castor’s offerings, paired with reputable customer and third-party review websites such as G2 and Gartner. We evaluated six key factors to help you make an informed decision:
Let’s get started!
Castor was established by former data scientists, engineers, and heads of data to help companies improve the data experience. In fact, when reading about Castor it’s evident that the founders felt the pain of data discovery first-hand, and built the company as a solution to their own problems.
Castor is a plug-and-play data catalog that unifies your data stack by simplifying data discovery, community, and health. It creates an automated data blueprint to harness your team’s collective intelligence so your whole team can work smarter by default. Castor is unique in that it was built for full company adoption - meaning that Castor’s value extends beyond the data team and brings business users along too.
Business users are empowered by the accessibility of the platform, which results in streamlined data workflows and reduced data team bottlenecks. Therefore, companies can drive efficiency and ROI by saving data engineers’ time, deprecating unused data, improving data health, and making higher-quality business decisions. Ultimately, Castor allows companies to optimize their data stack by unifying metadata from all of their preferred tools into one cohesive system - without the chaos.
Atlan was founded in Singapore in 2018 by Varun Banka and Prukalpa Sankar. It is known to provide different experiences for different users. Each user is given a custom experience, including their homepage and metadata, which is curated based on their workflows.
Atlan’s purpose is to allow companies to establish policies and provide access to data assets based on business domains or projects. Atlan's custom metadata builder features a no-code interface that enables you to easily share with others. It allows for collaboration through popular communication and workflow tools and plugins, all within the Atlan platform.
Atlan is built by a data team and was designed to be used by data teams. It is built on open-source technology and is API-driven. It provides a modern approach to data management with a solid discovery system, quality data profiling, and reliable data lineage. Atlan aims to simplify metadata management and improve the efficiency of collaborative efforts in various industries such as data management, analytics, and research.
Castor vs Atlan Comparison
Now that you have all the context, let's dive in to our evaluation of Castor vs Atlan along our six key dimensions:
Target Audience
Castor was built for viral, company-wide adoption. While its main users are data people – such as Data Analysts, Data Scientists, Data Stewards, Data Engineers, and Heads of Data – it is also intentionally designed to be used by Business, Operations, Support, Finance, and Management teams who are looking to make decisions based on real-time data.
Atlan was built by data people for data people. It is used by Data Engineers, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and Heads of Data. While it provides support for business roles as well, data team members are its sweet spot.
If your company is looking for data consumers to access the catalog regularly in order to make decisions, then Castor is the clear choice. Castor offers all of the functionality that data teams need, while also providing an easy interface for non-technical users to find relevant information. It supports business intelligence and decision-making, while simplifying collaboration.
What does this look like in practice? Check out success stories from Vestiaire Collective and Printify who boosted productivity and built a collaborative data culture using Castor.
Technology Integration
Both Castor and Atlan have external integrations as well as APIs. As of the time of this article, here are their current integrations. Please note that as these technologies are developing, more connections are becoming available by the day.
Castor Integrations
- Data Sources: Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Azure Synapse, PostgreSQL, MySQL
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Looker, Tableau, Metabase, PowerBI, Superset, Sisense, Domo, Qlik Sense, Redash, Mode, Sigma
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: dbt, Fivetran, Stitch
- Security: Okta, Google
- Notifications: Slack, Gmail
Atlan Integrations
- Data Sources: Athena, Redshift, AWS Glue (including S3), Databricks, BigQuery, Hive, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Presto, Salesforce, SAP HANA, Snowflake, Trino
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Looker, Metabase, Mode, PowerBI, Sigma, Tableau
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: dbt Cloud, dbt Core, Fivetran
While Castor matches integration support for the top cloud data warehouses, it offers more data visualization integrations than Atlan. The respective emphasis on data warehouses vs BI tools tracks with Atlan’s focus on the data team and Castor’s focus on both the data team and broader business audience. Check out their live pages to view the latest Castor Integrations and Atlan integrations.
Pricing
Castor offers three pricing plans - Starter, Premium, and Enterprise. Castor also offers a 14-day free trial.
- The Starter Package is $10,000 per year and includes 15 users, 2 integrations, 2,500 data assets, and 1 admin.
- The Premium package is custom pricing. It includes 30 users, 3 integrations, 5,000 data assets, and 2 admins.
- The Enterprise package is also custom pricing. It includes 50 users, 3 integrations, 10,000 data assets, and 5 admins.
You can compare all of the features of each plan here. For pricing on Premium and Enterprise, please contact sales.
Atlan pricing is not transparently listed on their website, but you can contact them for more information and a customized proposal.
Ease of Use
Castor differentiates itself in the world of data catalog systems by its user experience and ease of use. The company was created because the founders had worked with traditional data catalogs, and found them clunky, outdated, and difficult to manage.
Castor’s goal is to make working with data easy. It’s built in a way that anyone – regardless of their data literacy level, department, or technical prowess – can find and trust the data. It features a “Google-like” search engine, which allows any user to quickly find what they need, no technical expertise required. Castor can be set up within 30 minutes and will provide value on Day 1.
Atlan is also highly rated for its ease of use. The platform is designed with a sleek and intuitive interface, search and discovery features, and a collaborative environment for data teams. It simplifies data discovery and governance, while offering intuitive navigation, customizable dashboards, and collaboration tools like comments and annotations to help teams work more effectively.
Atlan is built for data teams and does require a higher data literacy level to understand, as its engineering-oriented features add complexity to the experience. For example, one way to query data in Atlan requires SQL, which business users may not be familiar with. Therefore, non-data users may need to work through data teams to get the information they need.
Because of this, Castor has better usability for the whole business. Its intuitive UX was purpose-built for viral adoption, which you can easily see in their short demo video.
Reviews and Ratings
In writing this article, we consulted both Castor and Atlan reviews from sites like G2. You can review the Castor ratings here, and the Atlan ratings here. These links also include product reviews. Overall, both companies rated well and had positive reviews. However, Castor was rated higher in the three main categories - Ease of Use, Quality of Support, and Ease of Setup.
G2 highlights Ease of Use as the top factor that impacts user satisfaction for Machine Learning Data Catalog products. It rates Castor as a 10/10 for ease of use, and Atlan as an 8.5/10. As one Castor reviewer notes,
“Castor is super easy to use! We love that it auto-populates definitions for commonly used tables (zendesk, salesforce, etc.). We also love that it tells us which tables are most popular - super helpful when we were just starting to populate our data dictionary, and that it syncs with tools like dbt and looker. Our #1 most favorite part is the lineage tool - it has been incredibly timesaving for us when making logic updates and changes to understand the downstream impact of said changes.”
For Quality of Support, Castor ranks 9.7/10 and Atlan ranks 8.6/10. It’s worth noting that the average is 8.6/10, so Castor outranked both Atlan and the average score across this category.
G2 also ranks both companies for Ease of Setup - Castor comes in at 9.2/10 and Atlan has a 9/10. The average score for this category is 8.1/10.
Support and ease of setup stood out to another reviewer, who mentioned:
“The connection to our databases was simple to establish with the help and support of Castor's team, which is excellent and very reactive!”
According to G2’s side-by-side comparison,
- Reviewers felt that Castor meets the needs of their business better than Atlan.
- When comparing quality of ongoing product support, reviewers felt that Castor is the preferred option.
- For feature updates and roadmaps, our reviewers preferred the direction of Castor over Atlan.
Service & Support
Castor includes 24/7 Email & LiveChat support for Starter plans and Customer Success for Premium and Enterprise plans. In addition, once a client signs on, Castor sets them up with a dedicated Slack channel and a Solutions Engineer is available to help with data connection and technical questions. Premium and Enterprise clients get a Customer Success Manager for the white glove experience and point of contact. A full list of features can be found alongside their pricing plans.
Atlan offers 24/7 support, with several tiers of escalation. They also offer a help desk portal where you can create and log a ticket. Finally, they have a dedicated Customer Happiness Team, which you can contact for ongoing requests.
Both companies offer plenty of self-help documentation, guides, and videos to help users find what they need quickly. Check out Castor’s full documentation to learn more.
The Best Data Catalog for Your Business
When looking at all of the factors discussed, including available integrations, key audience, ease of use, reviews and ratings, and service and support, the winner is Castor.
While both companies offer similar integrations and are regularly adding more, the real differentiator when looking at Castor compared to Atlan is the key audience for each product and its ease of use. Castor ranks higher for ease of use, which makes sense as the solution was built for non-data people to be able to use. In addition, Castor ranks significantly higher in Quality of Support.
Atlan certainly has great features, but Castor is the #1 platform for data lineage and ease of use for the whole organization.
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