OpenMetadata vs DataHub: Managed Pricing, Licensing and Lineage Compared

OpenMetadata and DataHub are the two serious open-source metadata platforms, and their managed versions now cost the same at list: Collate, the company behind OpenMetadata, and DataHub each sell a 12-month package on AWS Marketplace for exactly $75,000. Collate's Premium package covers 25 users and 5,000 data assets; DataHub Cloud's Discover & Govern package covers up to 20 monthly active users with no stated data limit. The bigger difference is licensing: DataHub is Apache 2.0 throughout, while OpenMetadata's ingestion framework and UI ship under the Collate Community License, which bars running it as a competing hosted service. Prices and license files read on 21 September 2026.

Most OpenMetadata vs DataHub comparisons are architecture essays: pull-based versus event-driven, relational model versus graph. That matters, but it rarely decides a purchase. What decides it is what each one costs to run yourself, what the managed version costs when you stop running it yourself, and whether the license lets you do what you plan to do. This page puts those three first.

OpenMetadata vs DataHub at a glance

Sources: AWS Marketplace listings for Collate (prodview-ynw6gz7pzjxm4) and DataHub (prodview-sum2rwvczvwvi), getcollate.io/pricing, datahub.com, the GitHub API, the LICENSE files in each repository and PyPI package metadata. List prices, no discount.

OpenMetadata vs DataHub pricing: the managed versions

Neither company prints a dollar figure on its own website. Collate's pricing page lays out three tiers with hard limits and sends Premium and Enterprise to "Book a Demo". DataHub has no pricing page at all. Both, however, sell through AWS Marketplace, and a transactable Marketplace contract has to carry a price. Both carry the same one: $75,000.00 for 12 months.

The packages meter different things, and that is where the real comparison lives. Collate Premium is described as "Full platform access for 25 users + 5,000 data assets". Its website adds the rest of the tier: metadata refreshed every 8 hours, unlimited data quality test cases, automated PII classification, SSO and API access, single-tenant or hybrid SaaS. DataHub Cloud Discover & Govern is described only as "Up to 20 Monthly Active Users", with no asset, connector or volume limit on the listing.

So the cheaper one depends on your constraint. A team with 25 regular users and a modest warehouse gets five more seats from Collate for the same money, which is $3,000 per user against DataHub's $3,750. A team with 60,000 tables and a small user base would breach Collate's 5,000-asset cap long before DataHub's user cap, and DataHub's package does not mention data volume at all. Neither listing prints an over-cap price, so the second year is a negotiation either way. For the full DataHub breakdown, including what "monthly active user" may or may not include, see DataHub pricing.

Both contracts are also non-refundable: each listing states that fees are non-cancellable except as required by law. Prove the tool on the open-source edition first.

Is OpenMetadata really open source? The license detail most comparisons miss

This is the finding that should change how you read every "both are Apache 2.0" line, including ones we have published ourselves. The GitHub API reports the OpenMetadata repository as Apache-2.0, because the root LICENSE file is Apache 2.0. But two subdirectories carry their own license. ingestion/LICENSE and openmetadata-ui/LICENSE are both the Collate Community License Agreement, Version 1.0.

The change is dated and checkable. The ingestion license file was replaced in a commit titled "Docs - Ingestion License (#17893)" on 17 September 2024, and PyPI shows the switch cleanly: openmetadata-ingestion 1.5.0 declares the Apache License 2.0, and 1.6.0 and every release since, up to 2.0.2.0, declares the Collate Community License.

What the license actually restricts is narrow. It grants the right to use, modify and redistribute the software royalty-free, except for an "Excluded Purpose", defined as "making available any software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other similar online service that competes with Collate products or services that provide the Software." Running OpenMetadata internally for your own company is fine. Building a hosted metadata product on it for customers is not.

For most buyers that is a footnote. It stops being one if your legal team has an approved-license policy that lists Apache 2.0 and not source-available licenses, if you are a consultancy that hosts tools for clients, or if you are building a data product with a catalog inside it. DataHub, by contrast, is Apache 2.0 in the root, the UI, the connectors and the backend, and the Python package (still named acryl-datahub after the 2025 rename) is Apache too.

Which is cheaper to self-host, OpenMetadata or DataHub?

OpenMetadata, by a component. Its production footprint is four parts: a Java 21 server (documented minimum 4 vCPU and 16 GiB), MySQL 8.0.42 or PostgreSQL 15, an OpenSearch or Elasticsearch cluster, and an ingestion runner, which since version 1.12 can be a Kubernetes-native job runner instead of Airflow. DataHub adds Kafka and a graph index to the same database and search tier, then runs four services of its own (GMS, the MAE and MCE consumers and the frontend), and its Kubernetes guidance says more than 7GB of RAM is needed for DataHub and its dependencies.

Kafka is the line item to think hardest about. If your platform team already runs Kafka, DataHub's event-driven design is an asset: metadata changes stream in close to real time, and push-based emitters are a first-class path. If you do not run Kafka, adopting a catalog means adopting a streaming platform, and that is a bigger commitment than the catalog. If nobody on the team has run either, budget to hire a freelance platform engineer for the initial deployment and the first upgrade, since upgrades on both involve schema migrations and search reindexing.

The license fee is zero on both. The honest self-hosted cost is the engineer's time, and it is the number to set against $75,000.

Does OpenMetadata or DataHub have better data lineage?

Both ship column-level lineage in the free edition, which is unusual in this category and worth saying plainly. DataHub's lineage comes from a SQL parser built on sqlglot, which DataHub says reaches 97 to 99% accuracy, across more than sixty sources with column-level support. OpenMetadata parses SQL from query logs on connectors that keep query history (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks and others), reads dbt, and accepts lineage through its API and manual edits in the UI.

In practice the difference is less about accuracy than about freshness of the graph. DataHub's event model updates lineage as metadata changes are emitted. OpenMetadata's pull-based ingestion refreshes on a schedule, and on Collate the schedule is part of the tier: weekly on Free, every 8 hours on Premium, hourly on Enterprise. If you need lineage that reflects this morning's deploy, check the refresh cadence you are actually buying.

Which has data quality and monitoring without paying?

OpenMetadata. The open-source edition includes table and column test cases, a data profiler and an incident manager. DataHub Core has none of that: freshness, volume, schema and column monitoring, custom SQL checks, AI anomaly detection, assertions and the data health dashboard are all DataHub Cloud features. If you want a free catalog that can also tell you a table failed a test, OpenMetadata is the stronger free edition. If you intend to pay for the managed version anyway, both include monitoring.

OpenMetadata or DataHub: which should you choose?

Choose DataHub if you need an unambiguous Apache 2.0 license, already operate Kafka, want near-real-time metadata from a large or fast-changing estate, and have a small number of heavy users relative to a lot of data. Choose OpenMetadata if you want a lighter self-hosted footprint, data quality tests in the free edition, and a managed tier that gives more seats for the same $75,000, and the Collate Community License is acceptable to your legal team.

And consider whether you need a company-wide catalog at all. Many teams comparing these two are really trying to answer "what breaks if I change this column" and "why is this dashboard stale". Those are lineage and monitoring questions. DataTrail answers them without a catalog rollout: it connects read-only to Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift or Postgres, parses query history and dbt artifacts into column-level lineage, shows downstream impact before a change merges, and runs freshness and schema-change alerts on the same graph. There is no Kafka, no search cluster and no user cap, and plans are $99 to $799 a month on the pricing page. It has no business glossary, so if governance is the mandate, pick one of these two. The single-vendor breakdowns are on DataHub alternatives and OpenMetadata alternatives, and the whole field is in data catalog tools and open source data catalog tools.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenMetadata better than DataHub?

Neither is better across the board. OpenMetadata is lighter to self-host, includes data quality tests in its free edition and gives 25 users in its $75,000 managed package. DataHub is Apache 2.0 throughout, streams metadata through Kafka in near real time and does not cap data assets in its $75,000 package. Pick on license policy, whether you run Kafka, and whether users or tables are your constraint.

How much does Collate cost compared to DataHub Cloud?

The same at list. Both sell a 12-month package on AWS Marketplace for $75,000.00. Collate's Premium package covers 25 users and 5,000 data assets, or $3,000 per user. DataHub Cloud's Discover & Govern package covers up to 20 monthly active users, or $3,750 per user, with no data limit stated. Neither vendor prints these prices on its own website.

Is OpenMetadata Apache 2.0 licensed?

Partly. The repository root and server are Apache 2.0, but the ingestion framework and the UI module ship under the Collate Community License 1.0. PyPI shows openmetadata-ingestion switching from Apache 2.0 at version 1.5.0 to the Collate license at 1.6.0. The license allows internal use and modification but forbids offering OpenMetadata as a competing hosted service.

Does DataHub need Kafka?

Yes. DataHub's architecture is event-driven, and Kafka carries metadata change events between its services. A production deployment runs Kafka alongside a relational database, Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, a graph index and four DataHub services. OpenMetadata does not need Kafka, which is the main reason its self-hosted footprint is smaller.

Which is easier to run, OpenMetadata or DataHub?

OpenMetadata, for most teams. It runs as a Java server with a relational database, a search cluster and an ingestion runner, and since version 1.12 the runner can be a Kubernetes job instead of Airflow. DataHub adds Kafka and a graph index and runs four services. If your team already operates Kafka, the gap narrows considerably.