Alation Data Lineage vs Grai
Alation Data Lineage
alation.comGrai
grai.ioSide by side
| Figure | Alation Data Lineage | Grai |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Data Lineage Tools | 7.8 (#15) | 8.3 (#7) |
| Deployment | Alation documentation applies lineage to both Alation Cloud Service and customer-managed instances. | The project says it is open source and can be self-hosted, including with Docker Compose or Kubernetes examples and Helm charts. |
| Founded | 2012 | 2021 |
| Headquarters | Redwood City, California, USA | St. Louis, Missouri, United States |
| Integrations | Alation says it offers more than 120 connectors, including connectors for databases and BI platforms, and supports custom connector development through its Open Connector Framework SDK. | Listed connectors include Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, dbt, Fivetran, flat files, Metabase, and Looker (alpha). |
| Intended users | The product describes visual lineage graphs and searchable paths for both technical and non-technical users. | Grai is presented for people who need to trace and test data relationships across data systems and applications. |
| Purpose | Maps data flows, transformations, and dependencies so users can trace data from source to destination. | Grai describes itself as a data lineage tool for understanding and testing how data relates across databases, warehouses, APIs, and dashboards. |
| Security | Alation says Cloud Service customer data is encrypted and not accessible to its site engineers. | Grai’s privacy policy says it uses commercially acceptable means to protect personal data but cannot guarantee absolute security. |
| Support | Alation offers product demonstrations and directs prospective customers to contact its sales team for pricing and product information. | The repository lists [email protected] for contact and points users to Slack and a community roadmap for requests and bug reports. |
Plans
In their own words
Alation Data Lineage
Alation Data Lineage has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Grai
Grai is a data lineage tool for tracing and testing relationships among databases, warehouses, APIs, and dashboards. It can automatically build column-level lineage across warehouses and production services. Centralized validation tests run when upstream data sources change, and GitHub Actions can alert CI/CD workflows when production changes affect warehouses or dbt projects. Listed connectors include Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, dbt, Fivetran, flat files, Metabase, and Looker; the Looker connector is marked alpha. Grai describes itself as open source and self-hostable, with Docker Compose and Kubernetes examples and Helm charts. Grai Cloud is available to run for free. The frontend is a React web application, and the CLI is a Python client for the Grai server. The repository lists an MIT-0 license. The privacy policy says Grai collects email addresses, cookies, and usage data, and names AWS and Google Cloud Platform among its service providers. It says commercially acceptable measures are used to protect personal data but cannot guarantee absolute security. The repository lists [email protected] and points to Slack and a community roadmap for requests and bug reports.