IBM Manta Data Lineage Pricing and watsonx.data intelligence Cost per Month
IBM's product pages stop at "start a free trial". Its public Cloud catalog does not: the Manta lineage engine is a $2,570 a month line item, every extra source or 5,000 tables is $427, and the watsonx.data intelligence plans run from $3,070 to $19,100 a month. Below is the full price list, a worked quote, and what costs extra.
Read-only connection. DataTrail never moves or mutates your data.
IBM Manta Data Lineage costs $2,570 a month at US list, $30,840 a year, for 3 data source definitions and 15,000 tables, and each additional Resource Unit is $427 a month for one more source or 5,000 more tables. Bought as part of watsonx.data intelligence instead, the plans are $3,070 (Essentials), $11,400 (Standard) and $19,100 (Premium) per instance per month. All figures come from IBM's public Cloud catalog, effective 1 October 2026, and exclude negotiated discounts.
watsonx.data intelligence pricing by plan, with the lineage limits in each
Manta's engine is the "Data Lineage" pillar of every watsonx.data intelligence plan. What changes from plan to plan is how many systems it may scan and how many tables it may map. These are the US prices per instance in IBM's catalog, effective 1 October 2026.
| Plan | Per month | Per year | Lineage limit | Other monthly limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $3,070 | $36,840 | 3 data source definitions, 10,000 tables | 3,000 discovered assets, 800 business terms, 60 CUH a month |
| Standard | $11,400 | $136,800 | 6 data source definitions, 40,000 tables | 35,000 discovered assets, 5,000 business terms, 450 CUH a month |
| Premium | $19,100 | $229,200 | Drawn from 2,500 included Resource Units | Resource Units spent on any capability; extra RU $7.63 |
| Trial | $0 | Not sold | 3 data source definitions, 5,000 tables | 30 days, then all data and assets are deleted |
$11,400 against $3,070 buys twice the data sources (6 vs 3) and four times the tables (40,000 vs 10,000). Per table mapped, Standard is slightly cheaper, about $0.29 a month against $0.31.
IBM's plan text says both are "restricted to the above capabilities and quantities". The catalog lists no add-on unit for them, so a seventh data source means moving to Premium or to a quote.
Premium includes 2,500 Resource Units that can go to any capability, with more at $7.63 each. IBM's catalog does not say how many RUs one data source or one table consumes, so ask for that conversion in writing.
IBM Manta Data Lineage pricing on the pay-as-you-go Knowledge Catalog
The older pay-as-you-go IBM Knowledge Catalog plan is still in IBM's catalog, and it is the one place the Manta engine is priced as its own line. The plan text names it directly, "IBM Manta Data Lineage", selected as an additional service on the catalog instance.
| Meter | US list | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Data Lineage instance (the Manta engine) | $2,570 per month | 3 data source definitions and 15,000 tables |
| Additional Data Lineage Resource Unit | $427 per month | 1 more data source definition, or 5,000 more tables |
| Catalog assets | $11.10 per 50 assets per month | $0.222 per asset per month |
| Capacity Unit Hours | $1.33 per CUH | Metadata import, enrichment and profiling compute |
| Enterprise Bundle, catalog instance | $20,200 per month | Volume plan, plus the same CUH and asset meters |
| Enterprise Bundle, Data Lineage instance | $5,120 per month | Additional lineage RU still $427 |
The first 15,000 tables cost about $0.17 each per month inside the $2,570 instance. Extra tables cost $427 per 5,000, about $0.085 each, half the rate. A data source never gets cheaper: every one beyond the third is $427 a month, $5,124 a year.
At $11.10 per 50 assets a month, cataloging 30,000 assets costs $6,660 a month, more than the lineage engine that maps them. Count assets, not tables, when you model the bill.
What IBM Manta costs for 8 data sources and 30,000 tables
A mid-size US data team: Snowflake, two Oracle databases, SQL Server, Informatica PowerCenter, dbt, Tableau and Power BI, about 30,000 tables, all of them cataloged. Priced on the pay-as-you-go catalog with the Manta add-on, at list, with 100 Capacity Unit Hours a month for metadata import as an assumption.
| Line | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Data Lineage instance (3 sources, 15,000 tables) | $2,570 | $30,840 |
| 5 more data source definitions, 5 RU at $427 | $2,135 | $25,620 |
| 15,000 more tables, 3 RU at $427 | $1,281 | $15,372 |
| Lineage subtotal | $5,986 | $71,832 |
| 30,000 catalog assets at $11.10 per 50 | $6,660 | $79,920 |
| 100 Capacity Unit Hours at $1.33 | $133 | $1,596 |
| Total at list | $12,779 | $153,348 |
The same team cannot fit on Standard (6 sources maximum), so its packaged alternative is Premium at $229,200 a year, before any Resource Units beyond the included 2,500.
Four costs to ask IBM about before you sign
On Standard and Premium, IBM's plan text says data quality definitions and rules need a separate DataStage or watsonx.data integration subscription. See watsonx.data integration pricing for that bill.
Governing documents and other unstructured data needs watsonx.ai Studio, watsonx.ai Runtime, watsonx.data integration and watsonx.data, four more IBM services, per the same plan text.
Metadata import and enrichment burn Capacity Unit Hours. Enrichment with profiling runs at 6 CUH per hour, with term assignment 8, minimum 0.96 CUH per job. Essentials includes 60 CUH a month.
Everything here is the IBM Cloud SaaS price. Manta on Cloud Pak for Data or on premises is licensed separately in Resource Units through IBM sales, and those figures are not in the public catalog.
IBM Manta pricing vs Alation, DataHub Cloud, Collibra and DataTrail
Measured on the entry price, IBM is the cheapest enterprise lineage engine on this list. It also has the most granular meter: IBM charges per data source and per 5,000 tables, where the AWS listings of the others each sell a single package.
| Product | 12-month list | What the entry package covers | Source, read |
|---|---|---|---|
| IBM Manta Data Lineage, pay-as-you-go | $30,840 and up | 3 sources, 15,000 tables, then $427 per RU | IBM Cloud catalog API, 5 Oct 2026 |
| watsonx.data intelligence Essentials | $30,840 to $36,840 | 3 sources, 10,000 tables, catalog included | AWS Marketplace and IBM catalog, 5 Oct 2026 |
| Alation | $60,000 | 1 unit, never defined | AWS Marketplace, 2 Oct 2026 |
| DataHub Cloud | $75,000 | 20 monthly active users | AWS Marketplace, 2 Oct 2026 |
| Collibra | $170,000 | 1 platform unit | AWS Marketplace, 26 Aug 2026 |
| DataTrail | $708 to $11,988 | Flat plan, no table, source or user meter | datatrail.ai/pricing |
Parsing code. Manta reads stored procedures, legacy ETL jobs and BI report internals across more than 50 technologies, which none of the warehouse-first tools here can match. If your lineage breaks inside PowerCenter or PL/SQL, it earns its price.
A modern stack adds sources fast. Every extra warehouse, BI tool or orchestrator is $5,124 a year at list. DataHub Cloud prices on users, not systems, while Alation's federal price list also charges per connector; see DataHub pricing and Alation pricing.
If everything lands in Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift or Postgres and dbt does the transforms, query history already holds the lineage. DataTrail reads it with no table or source meter.
When a flat lineage plan beats a per-source meter
One extra Manta data source is $427 a month at list. DataTrail's Team plan, with multiple sources, impact analysis and anomaly detection, is $179 a month billed yearly, Starter is $59 and Scale, for several warehouses, is $479. That comparison is only fair for one kind of buyer, so here is who it is.
If the job is "tell me what this column feeds before I change it" and "why is this dashboard stale", and your data lives in a modern cloud warehouse, you do not need a code-parsing engine priced per system. DataTrail connects with a read-only role, parses query history and dbt artifacts into column-level lineage, and runs impact analysis before a change ships, with freshness and schema-change alerts on the same graph.
If the job is regulatory lineage through decades of Oracle procedures, Informatica mappings and Cognos reports, buy Manta, and use the price list above to negotiate it. The longer, honest side-by-side is on IBM Manta alternatives, and the wider field is in data lineage tools.
IBM Manta pricing questions buyers ask
How much does IBM Manta cost?
IBM Manta Data Lineage lists at $2,570 a month on IBM Cloud, which is $30,840 a year, for 3 data source definitions and 15,000 tables. Each extra Resource Unit is $427 a month and buys one more data source or 5,000 more tables. Those are US list prices in IBM's public catalog, effective 1 October 2026.
Does IBM publish pricing for Manta Data Lineage?
Not on its marketing pages, which end at a trial or demo request. IBM's public Cloud catalog does carry the prices, by part number: Data Lineage instance D0PZ6ZX at $2,570 a month and additional Data Lineage Resource Unit D0PZ5ZX at $427. The watsonx.data intelligence plans are priced there too, from $3,070 to $19,100 a month.
How much does watsonx.data intelligence cost?
IBM lists watsonx.data intelligence at $3,070 a month for Essentials, $11,400 for Standard and $19,100 for Premium, per instance, effective 1 October 2026. That is $36,840, $136,800 and $229,200 a year. The 30-day Trial is free and deletes everything when it ends. AWS Marketplace sells Essentials for $30,840 for 12 months.
What is a data source definition in IBM Manta pricing?
It is one system the lineage engine scans, such as a Snowflake account, an Oracle database, an Informatica PowerCenter repository or a Tableau server. The base Data Lineage instance includes 3, and each additional one costs one Resource Unit, $427 a month. A stack with a warehouse, an ETL tool and a BI tool uses all three on day one.
Is IBM Manta still sold as a standalone product?
Not on its own product page. IBM acquired Manta Software in October 2023, and ibm.com/products/manta-data-lineage now redirects to the Data Lineage capability of watsonx.data intelligence. On IBM Cloud it is bought as a Data Lineage add-on to the Knowledge Catalog, or inside a watsonx.data intelligence plan that bundles catalog, quality and lineage.
Why is watsonx.data intelligence cheaper on AWS Marketplace?
On 5 October 2026 the AWS listing sold Essentials for $30,840 for 12 months, about $2,570 a month, while IBM's own catalog listed $3,070 a month effective 1 October 2026. That is a $6,000 a year gap at list. We do not know whether AWS will be repriced, so compare both channels on the day you buy.
What costs extra on top of a watsonx.data intelligence plan?
IBM's plan text says data quality definitions and rules, advanced profiling and key relationship analysis need a separate IBM DataStage or watsonx.data integration subscription, and unstructured data governance needs four more IBM services. So the plan price is not the whole bill if you want rule-based data quality.
Is there a cheaper alternative to IBM Manta for warehouse lineage?
If your lineage lives in Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift or Postgres with dbt, DataTrail builds column-level lineage and impact analysis from query history for $708 to $11,988 a year with no table or source meter. If you need lineage through legacy ETL, COBOL or stored procedures across dozens of systems, Manta is the stronger tool.
Where these numbers came from
IBM publishes every IBM Cloud price in its global catalog, a public API that needs no key. We read the watsonx.data intelligence service and each of its plans on 5 October 2026, taking the USA amount from each meter:
B=https://globalcatalog.cloud.ibm.com/api/v1
curl -s "$B?q=manta&complete=false"
# datacatalog, watsonx.data intelligence
curl -s "$B/<plan-id>/pricing"
# D0PZ6ZX Data Lineage instance 2570
# D0PZ5ZX Data Lineage RU 427
# effective_from 2026-10-01One field matters more than the rest: the catalog asset meter has a charge quantity of 50, so $11.10 is the price of 50 assets, not of one. The data source and table entitlements come from the plan text in the same API. The AWS figure was read from the rendered listing prodview-l3fj6yu5ubsnk, and the redirect from ibm.com/products/manta-data-lineage was checked with curl on the same day.
What we did not do: we did not repeat per-user figures from review aggregators, because IBM does not price this product per user. Every figure is US list, before private offers, enterprise agreements or negotiated discounts.
Related pages
What Manta does better than anyone, and when a warehouse-first tool fits.
The add-on IBM requires for data quality rules, priced per Resource Unit.
$60,000 on AWS, and the federal price list line by line.
$170,000 a year at list, and why a longer term buys nothing.
IPUs, the other enterprise metering model in governance.
The whole field compared on depth, deployment and price.
See your column-level lineage before you sign an IBM order
Connect your warehouse with a read-only role and get a map of what feeds what, down to the dashboards, with freshness and schema alerts on the same graph. No per-source meter, a flat plan with the price on the page.