Metaphor vs Atlan: Full Product Comparison
Compare Metaphor vs Atlan to help you choose the best Data Catalog for your business. Learn about their unique features in our full product comparison.
You’re probably here because you are looking for a data catalog or exploring new solutions in governance and documentation. Bonus points if you are passionate about data as much as we are.
Either way, you’re in the right place.
Metaphor and Atlan are two popular data catalogs with unique selling points and features. How do you pick the best product for your business, then?
This is where our detailed guide comes in.
We are comparing Metaphor and Atlan in six key categories:
We are also looking at third-party reviews to rate both products across all categories to make the process as unbiased as possible.
Metaphor vs Atlan - who wins?
Let’s find out.
Metaphor may have been established in 2020 but it only released its Metadata Platform in January 2022. Built by the team that created DataHub at LinkedIn, it’s already gaining ground as a powerful centralized solution to help you find and understand your data.
It’s a cloud-native data discovery platform that’s accessible both to technical and business users. It aims to democratize data with its data governance, data enablement, and data literacy features.
Metaphor combines three data types to help all users find what they need:
- Technical Metadata - this is about all the data that comes from data systems, including schemas, lineage, data profile, etc
- Business Metadata - this is adding business context to data to help everyone in the team make data-driven decisions
- Social / Behavioral Metadata - this layer links data to users and their behaviors
Combining this metadata, a company can feel more confident in accessing and understanding data – from the Head of Data to the newest hire in the team.
Atlan is a modern data catalog that aims to empower “the next generation of data teams”.
Its features range from data discovery with natural language search to column-level lineage and data governance. You can use it to easily find, organize, and share your data while its quality data profiling helps you understand the structure of your data.
Its Companion Sidebar focuses on trust signals to simplify the process of finding data based on what your data team is using. For many customers, Atlan has useful collaboration features to facilitate communication within the data team.
The no-code metadata builder makes it easy to access and share data with others to promote 360 visibility and build a data culture that embraces the power of metadata.
Metaphor vs Atlan Comparison
How is Metaphor compared to Atlan in customer support? And how is Atlan compared to Metaphor in tech integrations? We’re here to answer these questions and more. We reviewed both products in six key categories to help you find the best option for your business.
Target Audience
As with every data catalog, the primary audience for both products is the data team in a company. Data teams of all sizes can benefit from Metaphor and Atlan to empower data-driven decisions within their organizations.
Metaphor’s primary audience is Data Engineers, Data Scientists, and Data Stewards who want to find, organize and document their data. However, it also wants to appeal to business users who are not technical experts, such as business analysts and product managers.
The business-friendly wiki helps everyone access documentation they can understand while its social hashtags and Slack integration make it easier to capture knowledge and share it with others.
Atlan is a product built by data people addressing the team’s own pain points to help more data experts. The target audience is clear in the product’s offering since it’s all about supporting the next generation of data teams. It can still help business roles but there’s no question about who their key audience is.
Technology Integration
Both Metaphor and Atlan have a wide range of integrations – from data warehouses and business intelligence to data quality and communication.
Metaphor offers many integrations with data sources, data movement, and the cloud, while its integration with Slack also stands out with the option to search and share data assets directly through Slack’s app. Atlan also offers many integrations, with deeper support on data warehouses.
Metaphor Integrations:
- Data Warehouse: AWS Redshift, Azure Synapse, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Looker, Metabase, PowerBI, Tableau, ThoughtSpot
- Data Lake: AWS Glue, Hive, Unity Catalog, Airflow, dbt
- Authentication: ADFS, Google, OIDC, Okta, SAML
- Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure
- Communication: Microsoft Teams, Slack
- Data Quality: Lightup, Monte Carlo, Soda.io
Coming soon: Great Expectations, Hive, MongoDB, MySQL
Atlan Integrations:
- Data Warehouse: 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: AWS Glue, dbt Cloud, dbt Core, Fivetran, Hive
- Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure
- Data Quality: Great Expectations, Soda.io
It’s good to remember that the number of integrations doesn’t define the quality of the product. It’s up to you to pick the data catalog that suits your business needs.
You can find out more details on the pages for Metaphor Integrations and Atlan Integrations.
Pricing
Atlan vs Metaphor – which product has the best pricing plans?
Unfortunately, there is no quick answer to this question. Both Metaphor and Atlan don’t have a live pricing page on their website.
You can try both products for free and you can contact them to find more information about the plan that works best for your business.
Ease of Use
Metaphor and Atlan are designed to be user-friendly and easy to use.
Atlan is rated 8.6 on G2.com for Ease of Use, standing out with its user interface, its dashboard, and collaboration features.
“At a simple glance, Atlan might seem like a simple product that doesn't have much to offer, but when you explore and use it, you realize it has many (if not all) of the features its competitors have, but they've worked hard to offer a clean and user-friendly interface.”
– Verified user in plastics
Meanwhile, Metaphor may not have ratings in G2 yet but still, it is focused on offering an accessible and user-friendly product.
As it targets both technical and non-technical users, it understands the importance of delivering a simplified experience to those looking to use an intuitive data management platform.
Ultimately, it’s about testing the products to find out the one that feels easier to use, both for your data team and the business users who might have access to it.
Review and Ratings
For this category, we tend to rely on third-party reviews from sites like G2 and Capterra to pick a winner.
Atlan has a rating of 4.5/5 on G2. Its users find it easy to use and easy to set up and they also praise its data cataloging and collaboration features.
“Atlan is constantly making sure how they would be able to generate value with our metadata. In other words, they listen to their users.”
– Juan Sebastian
A few users felt that they needed some time to learn the product, which may be a challenge for someone new to data management.
Metaphor is still very new to the market so there are not any third-party reviews or rankings for key categories such as Quality of Support or Ease of Use.
However, it was recently recognized as a Data Governance & Catalog leader in the 2023 MAD landscape.
We are expecting to have more reviews soon so our ratings for the category only reflect what’s currently available.
Service and Support
This is an important category for all products. It determines how a company treats its customers and it can be a big factor for many teams choosing their next data management platform.
Metaphor does not provide many details about the service and support on its website but it still offers 24/7 support through email.
You can also talk to them by booking a demo to find out more about the product before you start using it.
Atlan received 8.9 in Quality of Support from G2 and many users praise their customer support.
“Combined with the world class support that the Atlan team provides, Atlan enables us to have a better handle on the breadth of data that we have internally.”
- Chase
It has an AI bot chat assistant on the website along with 24/7 support and a help desk portal.
A nice touch from their team is treating customers like partners and making them feel valued.
“One of the best things about Atlan is they have not treated us like a customer, but as a partner from the very beginning. What I mean when I say that is, they have had check-ins with us and our team, proactively seeking feedback and ways they can make improvements to better help us accomplish what is important for our team. We have never had such a positive relationship with a customer success manager as we do with Atlan from any other software before”
– Emily
The Best Data Catalog for Your Business
Metaphor vs Atlan – do we have a winner? Looking at all the key factors, the winner is Atlan. In some categories, the difference in the ranking comes from Metaphor being at earlier stages though it’s quickly gaining ground.
If you are looking for a data catalog to find and organize your data, we have another popular and highly-rated recommendation for you.
CastorDoc has a rating of 4.8/5 on G2 and it also won the award ‘Winter 2023 G2 Leader’ in the Machine Learning Data Catalog category. Users love the simple interface that is easy to use both for techDocnical and non-technical users, but also its documentation, the tech integrations, and the customer support.
Compared to Atlan, CastorDoc has a higher rating from G2 users in the Ease of Use, Quality of Support, and Ease of Setup making it the #1 option for everyone on the team. You can find more details on the page comparing CastorDoc vs Atlan.
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“[I like] The easy to use interface and the speed of finding the relevant assets that you're looking for in your database. I also really enjoy the score given to each table, [which] lets you prioritize the results of your queries by how often certain data is used.” - Michal P., Head of Data