Alation vs Collibra Pricing and What Each Catalog Costs a Data Team per Year

Short answer: On the only figures either vendor has put in writing, Alation is cheaper to start. Alation's AWS Marketplace listing sells the Alation Data Catalog starting at 60,000 dollars for a 12 month contract. Collibra lists its Data Intelligence Platform at 170,000 dollars for 12 months, and 221,000 on AWS GovCloud. Neither vendor prints a price on its own website, neither listing defines what the price covers in seats or sources, and both are non-cancellable. Your real quote will sit well above either floor once users, connectors, data quality and services are added.

These two end up on the same shortlist whenever a company decides it needs a governance program: a catalog people actually search, named owners for critical tables, a business glossary, and data quality scores someone can report upward. Most comparison pages rank them on features and then quote a price from 2024. We read both AWS Marketplace listings on September 30, 2026, along with each vendor's own pricing URL and documentation, so the numbers below are current and sourced.

Alation vs Collibra pricing side by side

What Alation actually charges

Alation's pricing URL answers with a redirect to a page called Start a Conversation, which offers a 30 minute call with an Alation expert and asks for your company and job title. There are no tiers on it. The one number Alation has published sits on the AWS Marketplace listing for The Alation Data Intelligence Platform: a single dimension, Alation Data Catalog, described as a subscription starting at 60,000 dollars for 12 months. The AWS summary on the same page points out that the catalog is sold in units and that the table never says what one unit is.

That figure is lower than the one most comparison pages still repeat. Several review and comparison sites quote a baseline package of about 198,000 dollars for 12 months, attributed to the AWS listing in 2024. The listing no longer says that. Treat 60,000 as the floor in writing today, not as your price.

Two more things shape an Alation quote. The documentation names three license types: Creator for admins, stewards and composers who edit the catalog, Explorer (Cloud Service only) for people who search and run query forms, and Viewer for readers. And Alation Data Quality is documented as a feature customers purchase, running as pushdown SQL on your own warehouse, so its checks also show up on your Snowflake or Databricks bill. We go through each line, including the scheduling setting that support has to switch on, in our Alation pricing breakdown.

What Collibra actually charges

Collibra prints no price for any product on its own site. Its AWS Marketplace listing for the Collibra Data Intelligence Platform carries one dimension, Collibra Cloud Platform, described as a subscription to Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud at 170,000 dollars for 12 months. We re-read it on September 30, 2026, and the figure has not moved since we first recorded it. A second listing on AWS GovCloud prices the same platform at 221,000 dollars for 12 months. Both carry the same refund sentence as Alation's: fees are non-cancellable and non-refundable except as required by law.

Like Alation's figure, Collibra's has no user count, no asset count and no module list attached, so it is a floor rather than a quote. Our Collibra pricing analysis covers what that single line item leaves out and why the per-user Collibra prices you see in search results do not hold up.

A worked comparison for the same program

Take a mid-market company with 40 people who curate the catalog and 400 who read it, three warehouses, and data quality checks on its 200 most important tables.

• Alation, public floor: 60,000 dollars for 12 months before the seat mix is sized. Forty Creator seats and the Data Quality feature are priced in the private offer, not on the listing.
• Collibra, public floor: 170,000 dollars for 12 months, or 221,000 on GovCloud. Seats, connectors and data quality scope are negotiated.
• Both: implementation services, glossary design and steward time on top, typically quoted separately from the license.
• Monitoring only: DataObservability Scale covers 1,500 tables across several warehouses with column-level lineage, SSO and an audit log for 5,754 dollars a year billed yearly.

The honest gap between the two catalogs on paper is 110,000 dollars at the floor. The real gap depends on seats and modules, and the only way to see it is to get both quotes with every line and its unit written down.

Where each one wins

Alation wins on adoption. Its search ranks tables by how people actually query them, its curation and stewardship tools suit analysts as much as governance staff, and its Data Quality product inherits owners, lineage and usage from the catalog, so a failed check lowers the trust signal where business users see it. Its data quality sources are broad, reaching Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks, BigQuery, Synapse, SQL Server, PostgreSQL and SAP HANA.

Collibra wins on the governance program itself: policy management, workflow depth, and a business glossary built for large regulated organizations with formal stewardship roles. If the driver is privacy, such as tracking where a person's records live when a request arrives, many teams pair either catalog with dedicated DSAR software rather than building request workflows inside the catalog.

Neither is built to watch every warehouse table for the failure nobody wrote a rule for. Both run the checks someone configures on the assets someone chose.

Which one should a data team buy?

Start with what cost you the most last quarter. If it was audit findings, undocumented assets or four versions of the revenue table, you need a catalog. Choose Alation if adoption by analysts matters most and a lower public floor helps your budget case, or Collibra if you run a formal governance office and need its workflow depth.

If it was a dashboard showing yesterday's numbers because a load failed silently, a column changing type, or row counts halving overnight, you need monitoring first, and a six-figure catalog is the slowest way to get it. DataObservability connects read-only to Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks or Redshift, learns freshness, volume, schema and distribution baselines on every table, and alerts in Slack or PagerDuty. It costs 59.50 dollars a month for 50 tables, 179.50 for 250 and 479.50 for 1,500, billed yearly, with a 14 day trial. See how the catalog vendors price lineage in our data lineage tools pricing comparison, and every plan on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Alation cheaper than Collibra?

On published figures, yes. Alation's AWS Marketplace listing starts the Alation Data Catalog at 60,000 dollars for 12 months, and Collibra's lists its platform at 170,000 dollars for 12 months. Neither includes the full seat count, data quality or services, so compare complete written quotes before deciding.

How much does Alation cost per year?

The only public figure is the AWS Marketplace subscription, starting at 60,000 dollars for a 12 month contract. The unit behind it is not defined, Creator, Explorer and Viewer seats have no published rate, and Alation Data Quality is purchased separately, so most real contracts land higher.

How much does Collibra cost per year?

Collibra lists its Data Intelligence Platform at 170,000 dollars for 12 months on AWS Marketplace and 221,000 dollars on AWS GovCloud. The listing has one subscription dimension with no user or asset count, so treat it as a floor rather than a quote for your organization.

Do Alation and Collibra include data quality?

Both sell it, and neither includes it by default at the public price. Alation Data Quality is a purchased feature on Alation Cloud Service. Collibra Data Quality and Observability is a separate product scoped in the quote. A team that only needs monitoring can buy it on its own for far less.