OpenMetadata is powerful if your team wants to operate the stack. Dawiso gives you the same enterprise metadata outcomes as a managed platform, with business adoption and agents from day one, and MCP from the Corporate plan.
TL;DR
Managed in every deployment, not a self-hosting program. AI in every plan, not gated to Collate Cloud. Public pricing, the full catalog in every plan.
Self-guided, in the real product. No sales call; a work email unlocks the full tour.
Piloted OpenMetadata first
We had tried to build that on OpenMetadata, but that path proved endless. The Dawiso pilot showed real value within a few weeks - its ready-made connectors let us scan Keboola, Snowflake and Tableau almost immediately.
Jakub TrefilíkSenior Product Manager, Seznam.cz
681,000governed objects, priced per user rather than per object at Seznam.cz
Built on customer feedback and publicly available sources.
Features
Operating model
Fully managed in every deployment option (SaaS / your Azure / on-prem), 100% feature parity, vendor-handled upgrades
Self-hosted OSS edition runs a multi-service stack (MySQL/PostgreSQL + Elasticsearch/OpenSearch + OM server + Airflow ingestion) started in dependency order; in-place DB upgrade migrations are owned by your team, with docs recommending a metadata backup first
Open source story
Closed source, public pricing, the full catalog included
OSS is genuine Apache 2.0; AI Studio, Reverse Metadata, Service Insights, governance leadership dashboards positioned as paid Collate Cloud
Governance workflows
Lifecycle, approvals, ownership in every plan
Custom Auto-Classification and governance leadership dashboards are Collate Cloud features
AI agents and MCP
Managed production MCP read+write (Databricks MCP Marketplace) from the Corporate plan, Technical Writer Agent and Agentic Data Governance Steward in every plan
OpenMetadata OSS exposes a read+write MCP server at /mcp; AskCollate, AI Agents/AutoPilot, AI Studio gated to Collate Cloud
Time to value
Fully managed; first use cases in 2-4 weeks; full named rollout ~11 weeks (P3 Parks, 78 days)
4-12 weeks with a strong engineering team; longer as adoption and governance are on you
Pricing transparency
Public list price, one product, every plan
OSS free / Collate Cloud sales-gated, no public list price
02Customer proof
After an OpenMetadata pilot, real value within a few weeks
Seznam.cz piloted OpenMetadata in-house and found it costly and slow to run, with weak support for lineage and data products. It still keeps OpenMetadata for technical work; Dawiso adds the business layer on top.
681,000governed objects, priced per user rather than per objectSeznam.cz
596,947relationships between objects (lineage and dependencies)Seznam.cz
✓Role-based editing rights per term and per domain
✓Excel bulk import and export for mass curation
TERM Approved
Customer LTV
✦AI suggests 3 ownersOK
OpenMetadataLimited
Engineer-shaped, light governance in OSS
-Glossary modelling exists, but UX is engineer-first
-Lifecycle and approval workflows live in Collate Cloud, not OSS
-Bulk import / export is CSV-based in OSS; Dawiso ships native Excel I/O for stewardship at scale
GlossaryOSS GAP
Customer LTV
⚠Approval workflows in Collate Cloud
Excel I/OCloud only
LifecycleCloud only
Cloud upgrade required
AIProduction-ready agents on day one, MCP from the Corporate plan
AI
AI Context Layer
Production-ready agents on day one, MCP from the Corporate plan
dawisoWinner
Native MCP + agentic stewards
✓REST API in every plan, MCP server from the Corporate plan
✓Agentic data steward + technical writer included
✓No extra SKU, no separate vector store
Where's revenue?
AI · 96%
fct_orders_daily · Finance · 04:12
Ask anything…›
OpenMetadataLimited
OSS MCP shipping; agentic AI Cloud-gated
-OpenMetadata OSS MCP server is at /mcp (open-metadata.org)
-Collate Cloud adds AI Studio and Dynamic Agents on top of OSS
-No pre-built Technical Writer Agent or Agentic Data Governance Steward in OSS or Cloud
OSS MCP + Cloud AI StudioCOLLATE-GATED
Where is revenue defined?
🔒
OSS exposes MCP at /mcp; AI Studio Cloud-gatedCollate Cloud adds AI Studio + Dynamic Agents
OSS MCP at /mcpAgentic AI Cloud-gated
LINEAGEEditable inside the UI, not via config files
LINEAGE
Data lineage
Editable inside the UI, not via config files
dawisoWinner
Auto + manual edits, column-level
✓Live lineage from warehouse and transformations
✓Edit edges in-product where the parser misses
✓Impact analysis on every schema change
LINEAGE · COLUMN-LEVEL
4 nodes · 4 edges · realtime
OpenMetadataLimited
Strong technical lineage, engineer-managed
-Column-level lineage works across common SQL warehouses
-Edits and corrections typically run through ingestion config, not UI
-Business-context lineage is thinner than the technical view
LineageSELF-HOST
⚠OSS sufficient, but governance not
Lineage scanOSS
WorkflowsCloud only
LifecycleCloud only
Cloud paywall on governanceEngineer-heavy
DEPLOYMENTManaged and complete, not a stack you operate
DEPLOYMENT
Operating model and packaging
Managed and complete, not a stack you operate
dawisoWinner
Fully managed, the full catalog in every plan
✓Managed in every deployment option - SaaS, your Azure tenant, or on-prem - with 100% feature parity
✓No multi-service stack to run, patch, or scale; upgrades handled by the vendor
✓Technical Writer Agent in every plan; read+write MCP Server and BYO-LLM (Azure OpenAI, Mistral, Llama, Granite) from the Corporate plan
✓In-product customization of schemas, workflows, and roles - no services engagement
PRICE TIER
dawiso$
OpenMetadata$$
OpenMetadataLimited
Self-host the stack; advanced AI gated to Collate Cloud
-OSS edition is a multi-service stack (database + search + server + Airflow ingestion) you start in order, patch, and scale yourself
-In-place DB upgrade migrations are a recurring community pain point (e.g. GitHub issues #22914, #15576, #24949); the OpenMetadata docs themselves recommend backing up metadata before upgrading
-AskCollate, AI Agents/AutoPilot, AI Studio, Custom Auto-Classification, Reverse Metadata, Service Insights, and leadership dashboards are gated to paid Collate Cloud, not in the Apache-2.0 edition
-Guaranteed/priority support and a 99.9% uptime SLA come only with Collate Cloud; the OSS tier relies on a community Slack with no SLA
PlansOSS / CLOUD
OSS self-host engineer-heavy
Collate Cloud 🔒 sales-gated
PACKAGINGShip-ready out of the box, not out of an SOW
PACKAGING
Procurement model
Ship-ready out of the box, not out of an SOW
dawisoWinner
One product, the full catalog in every plan
✓No SKU shopping: one product in three plans
✓AI features included, not a premium add-on
✓No services SOW required to deploy
PRICE TIER
dawiso$
OpenMetadata$$
OpenMetadataLimited
OSS free / cloud sales-gated
-Marketed as open source - the practical version is paid Collate Cloud
-Self-hosting OSS means operating the stack and forfeiting governance and AI features
-Collate Cloud pricing is sales-gated, no public list
PlansOSS / CLOUD
OSS self-host engineer-heavy
Collate Cloud 🔒 sales-gated
See the difference yourself. Click through the real product, at your own pace.
04Price and ratings
What it costs, and what users say
A 0-10 total-cost score from public AWS Marketplace starting prices, next to verified G2 ratings.
Total cost of ownership score, 0-10. Lower is better.
Dawiso
2.1/10
Collibra
9.8/10
Ab Initio
6.8/10
Atlan
5.6/10
Select Star
5.0/10
DataHub
4.1/10
OpenMetadata
4.1/10
Alation
3.2/10
DataGalaxy
2.7/10
Secoda
2.6/10
TCO scores anchor on public AWS Marketplace starting subscription pricing, normalized 0-10 where lower is better. Full 3-year program cost varies by services SOWs, paid modules (DQ, lineage, AI agents), and steward FTE. Methodology updated 2026-05.
CRITERIA
Ease of Use
9.7
8.6
Ease of Setup
9.4
7.8
Quality of Support
9.4
8.4
Data Governance
8.9
8.0
05FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Still deciding? Contact us and we will answer in a short time.
Is OpenMetadata free, and how does that compare to Dawiso?
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 in every plan and a read+write MCP Server from the Corporate plan.
How long does migration from OpenMetadata take?
Dawiso reaches first use cases in 2-4 weeks, with a full named rollout (P3 Parks) in ~11 weeks. Migration from a self-hosted OpenMetadata adds a metadata export and a mapping pass, which most teams complete inside one additional sprint. Teams already on Collate Cloud usually move faster because the metadata model is closer.
Can we run OpenMetadata and Dawiso in parallel during evaluation?
Yes. Point both at the same warehouse, run a 30-day shadow trial with a small business team on Dawiso, and compare adoption side by side. We support this evaluation pattern explicitly.
When does OpenMetadata still make sense?
If your team is engineering-heavy, comfortable running the multi-service OpenMetadata stack on Kubernetes, owning in-place upgrade migrations, and contributing to open-source code over filing tickets, OpenMetadata fits. If you also want a managed catalog, the AI features in every plan, and public pricing in one product, that is the Dawiso case.
See why teams pick Dawiso over OpenMetadata
Explore Dawiso in the real product, at your own pace. No sales call; a work email unlocks the full tour.
dawiso Winner 
OpenMetadata Limited