§ Pricing · Catalog & discovery

OpenMetadata pricing.

Free open source · self-hosted

OpenMetadata's core is open source and free to self-host; the vendor monetizes a managed offering (Collate (managed)). There is no published USD rate for the paid tiers — expect a sales conversation for the managed product. A free tier exists.

Sales-led Free tier Free self-host

The numbers

What's verifiable.

Pricing model open core

Charged per custom

Published ○ Contact sales required

Free tier ● Yes

Free self-host ● Available

Free tier OpenMetadata is fully free under Apache-2.0; self-host with your own infrastructure. Collate (managed) advertises a free entry tier with limited deployment scale.

Sales-only tier Collate (managed)

The model

How open core pricing works.

How it's charged

The core engine is open source and free to run yourself. The vendor sells a managed cloud, plus features that only exist in the paid layer (SSO, RBAC, support, hosted UI).

What to watch

The line between core and paid moves over time. Check which capabilities you rely on are actually in the OSS repo, not just demoed from the cloud product.

Alternatives by price

Same cluster, ranked by entry cost.

Amundsen OSS · free The Lyft-born OSS catalog that invented search-first discovery — historically important, but development has largely stalled since 2024. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Apache Atlas OSS · free The ASF's Hadoop-native metadata framework — typed entities, classification propagation via lineage, and Ranger-enforced policies. pricing vs OpenMetadata

DataHub OSS · free Apache-2.0 metadata platform with a serious managed counterpart — strongest event-driven architecture and column-level SQL lineage in OSS. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Unity Catalog OSS · free Open-source universal catalog for data and AI under Apache-2.0 — Iceberg-REST and Hive-MS compatible, Databricks-led, LF AI hosted. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Alation Contact sales The incumbent that defined the data catalog — behavioral search, deep governance, and strong column-level lineage. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Atlan Contact sales Enterprise catalog and governance plane positioned as the AI context layer — connectors, lineage, contracts, and an MCP server for agents. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Collibra Contact sales Enterprise data-and-AI governance incumbent: catalog, glossary, workflow stewardship, lineage, and a separate ML data-quality module. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Secoda Contact sales AI-native data catalog, lineage, and observability from Toronto — acquired by Atlassian in December 2025 to power Rovo AI. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Select Star Contact sales Automated data catalog with column-level lineage parsed from query logs — being acquired by Snowflake to power Horizon Catalog. pricing vs OpenMetadata

Ranked by published entry price — sales-led tools sort last because their floor is unverifiable. For capability-ranked substitutes, see all OpenMetadata alternatives, scored.

Common questions

Asked about OpenMetadata pricing.

Does OpenMetadata publish pricing?

No. OpenMetadata is sales-led with no published rates. Collate (managed).

Does OpenMetadata have a free tier?

Yes. OpenMetadata is fully free under Apache-2.0; self-host with your own infrastructure. Collate (managed) advertises a free entry tier with limited deployment scale.

Can you run OpenMetadata for free by self-hosting?

Yes — OpenMetadata can be self-hosted at no license cost. OpenMetadata is the Apache-2.0 project; Collate is the original-creators managed service that extends it with AI Analytics (AskCollate), enterprise MCP, Knowledge Graph, and SLA support. The OSS is genuinely the same software, not a stripped tier — Collate adds proprietary AI and operational layers on top. This is the cleanest OSS-versus-managed split among catalog vendors.

What's the cheapest alternative to OpenMetadata?

Among the 9 same-cluster alternatives indexed here, Amundsen has the lowest entry cost (oss · free). Ranking is by published entry price; sales-led tools may quote anywhere.

Where these numbers come from.

Every figure above traces to public sources — the vendor's own pricing page where one exists, marketplace listings and third-party spend data where it doesn't. Verified 2026·05·08. The full capability spec lives on the OpenMetadata tool page.

Pricing changes faster than any index. Notice something stale? Send a correction.

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