The Apache-2.0 OpenMetadata edition is free to license, but self-hosting it is a multi-service stack - database, search, server, and an Airflow ingestion workflow - that your team starts in dependency order, patches, scales, and migrates on every upgrade, where the docs recommend backing up metadata first. In practice that means a meaningful time-to-production and an ongoing maintenance commitment - the real comparison is total cost of ownership, not the license. You can model your own numbers with our TCO calculator. Dawiso is fully managed in every deployment option - SaaS, your Azure tenant, or on-prem - so there is no infra to run and time-to-value is 2-4 weeks. The AI and automation features many teams want from OpenMetadata - AskCollate, AI Agents, Reverse Metadata, Service Insights - are gated to the paid Collate Cloud, whereas Dawiso ships its Technical Writer Agent and read+write MCP Server in every plan.