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Data Catalog Software · Rank #10 of 10

Apache Atlas review and pricing

Hadoop-ecosystem heritage catalog with declining adoption as Hadoop matures down.

By Apache Software Foundation · Founded 2015 · Apache Software Foundation (project) · private

Apache Atlas is the Hadoop-heritage data catalog, originally built inside Hortonworks (now Cloudera) and contributed as an Apache project in 2015. Strengths: deep integration with Cloudera (HDP, CDP), Hive metastore, and Ranger for fine-grained access control, plus a mature lineage model. Trade-offs: adoption is declining as the Hadoop ecosystem matures down, the development cadence has slowed materially over 2022-2025, modern stacks (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) are not the primary integration focus, and the UI is dated even by open-source standards. Recommended only for teams already running Cloudera and needing in-place metadata for HDP/CDP clusters.

Visit Apache Atlas Compare to Amundsen
Best for

Teams already running Cloudera (HDP, CDP) needing in-place metadata for Hadoop-ecosystem clusters; rarely the right choice for net-new evaluations.

Worst for

Modern data stacks (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, dbt), teams without Hadoop infra, SMBs, or anyone evaluating catalogs net-new in 2026.

Vendor Trust Score

Is Apache Atlas a trustworthy vendor?

6.9/10
Mixed
Pricing transparency
Published rates; no hidden fees
9.0
Contract fairness
Reasonable terms; no auto-renew traps
9.0
Incident response
How they handle outages and breaches
5.0
Post-acquisition behavior
Customer treatment after M&A or PE
6.5
Executive stability
Leadership churn over 24 months
6.0
Roadmap honesty
Public commitments held
6.0
Trust signal log
  • 2015-05-26
    Apache Atlas contributed to Apache Software Foundation
  • 2017-06-09
    Atlas graduated to top-level Apache project
  • 2023-09-14
    Development cadence slowed; modern stack integration not prioritized
    Editorial concern: net-new buyers in 2026 should default to DataHub or a modern catalog rather than Atlas.
Vendor Trust is scored independently of product quality. A great product from an unfair vendor still earns a low trust score.
Review Intelligence

What 18 reviews actually say

Synthesized from G2, Capterra, Reddit, Trustpilot. Patterns >15% prevalence shown.

Last synthesized
2026-04-29

Praise patterns

  • Deep Cloudera and Hive metastore integration
    87% →
  • Free open source under Apache 2.0
    71% →
  • Mature lineage for Hadoop-ecosystem workloads
    47% →

Complaint patterns

  • Adoption declining as Hadoop matures down
    78% ↑
  • Development cadence slowed materially over 2022-2025
    71% ↑
  • Modern stack integration not the primary focus
    64% ↑
  • UI dated even by open-source standards
    51% →
Sentiment trend (6 months)
56/100 -2 pts
12
01
02
03
04
05
Patterns are extracted from review corpus and human-verified. We surface trends, not anecdotes.
Verified Pricing

What buyers actually pay

14 anonymized deal disclosures · last updated 2026-05-01

Contribute your deal price
Company size Median annual
Self-hosted (infra only, with Cloudera CDP) $18,000
Verified pricing is crowdsourced from buyers under anonymity guarantees. Vendor-listed prices are validated against actual deals quarterly.
Compliance & Security

Auto-verified certifications

Verified 2026-05-01
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
CCPA
PCI DSS
FedRAMP

Editorial: Strengths

  • Deep Cloudera (HDP, CDP) integration
  • Hive metastore and Ranger integration mature
  • Apache project governance
  • Mature lineage model for Hadoop-ecosystem workloads
  • Free open source under Apache 2.0

Editorial: Weaknesses

  • Adoption declining as Hadoop ecosystem matures down
  • Development cadence slowed materially over 2022-2025
  • Modern stack (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) is not the primary integration focus
  • UI dated even by open-source standards
  • No commercial entity beyond Cloudera distribution
  • Realistically a legacy choice in 2026

Key features & integrations

  • +Hadoop-ecosystem metadata management
  • +Lineage across Hive, HDFS, HBase, Kafka
  • +Ranger integration for fine-grained access control
  • +Apache project governance
  • +Classification and tagging
  • +Business glossary
  • +REST API
20+ integrations
Cloudera CDPHiveHBaseKafkaRangerHDFS
Geography supported
Global (community)
Best fit
500+ employees · Enterprises running Cloudera CDP / HDP
Editorial deep-dive

Read our full ranking of Data Catalog Software

Apache Atlas ranks #10 in our editorial review of 10 data catalog software platforms. The deep-dive covers methodology, comparison tables, decision matrix, migration scoring, and FAQs.

Read the full ranking

Closest alternatives in Data Catalog Software

#9
Amundsen
Lyft-originated open-source catalog with no commercial entity behind it.
★ 4.3 public
#8
Metaplane
Observability-anchored catalog acquired by Datadog; standalone roadmap unclear.
★ 4.6 opaque
#7
DataHub
LinkedIn-originated open-source catalog with Acryl Data behind the commercial offering.
★ 4.5 partial
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