4 categories · RankedAlation
Standing by category
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data catalogs and governance | Data platform | 0% | 10 of 83 | 28% | 57 | criticized challenger | |
| Data quality and observability | Data platform | 0% | 97 of 110 | 100% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Metaplane at 31% | |
| Data virtualization | Data platform | 0% | 49 of 99 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Denodo at 28% | |
| Master data management | Data platform | 0% | 45 of 92 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Profisee MDM at 41% |
Movement
By model
How each model treated Alation across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 6 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
By framing
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Best-in-class search, behavioral analytics, conversational discovery with LLM assistance” Kimi K2 · Data catalogs · comparative prompt · first choice
“favoring middle-ground options like Alation, Collibra, Atlan, or Microsoft Purview” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Data catalogs · negative prompt · first choice
“look toward modern "active metadata" platforms like Atlan, Alation, or Secoda” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Data catalogs · negative prompt · first choice
“Alation is widely considered the best "self-service" data catalog.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Data catalogs · comparative prompt · first choice
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Typically Too Expensive for Mid-Market - Alation: Enterprise deployments often start around $198,000/year” Kimi K2 · Data catalogs · direct prompt · hard negative
“Options to Avoid ... Commercial tools (Collibra, Alation, Atlan, Select Star)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Data catalogs · budget prompt · hard negative
“Alation | Strong but pricey; 6–12 week deployment; enterprise-focused” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Data catalogs · direct prompt · hard negative
“What to Avoid: The "Enterprise Trap" ... Why you should skip them” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Data catalogs · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Alation, over the 167 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Alation was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
What carried it into the answer
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 149 of the 167 answers that named Alation and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
508 of the 554 domain citations in answers naming Alation came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
alation.com ranks 2 on Google for the category's searches. In the answers, Alation takes 0% of first choices and Atlan takes 44%.ShowHide
Search and answers
In search
Google, US estimates- Searches for its name, Google
- 4,400 a month (“alation”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 482 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 53,500 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 3,810 · 405 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 4,416
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This edition- First choices
- 9 across its categories
- Named in
- 167 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 149 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHide| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| News or press | 193 | undated | |||
| Blog | 183 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 136 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 100 | undated | |||
| Podcast or video | 89 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 69 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 17 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 10 | undated | |||
| Case study | 9 | undated | |||
| Template or tool | 3 | undated |
Events in person
- October 8, 2026revAlation 2026 Conference SeriesSydney · hosts
- September 30, 2026revAlation 2026 Conference SeriesLondon · hosted
- September 17, 2026revAlation 2026 Conference SeriesChicago · hosted
- November 12, 2025revAlation 2025London · hosted
- October 16, 2025revAlation 2025Sydney · hosted
As the event pages on alation.com state them, read September 28, 2026.
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page alation.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Follow Alation
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Alation is its own company.ShowHide
The company
In its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Alation Intelligence Operating System
- For
- Global enterprises
- Integrations claimed
- 100 alation.com/partners
- Certifications
- ISO 27001:2022SOC 2 Type 2ISO 27017:2015ISO 27018:2019ISO 27701:2019HIPAAHITECHFedRAMP Moderate
- Customers named
- OportunGeorgia-PacificCienaCNA InsuranceTPG TelecomOceanaGoldBramblesCHOP
- Not stated on the pages read
- Price, starting price, free plan or trial, hosting
What Alation's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: alation.com, alation.com/legal/security, alation.com/product/compose, alation.com/customers, alation.com/partners. A claimed page can correct any of them.
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Alation's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Alation, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Alation by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Alation is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Alation, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.