The top data catalog tools for 2025 include Hygraph, DataHub, Collibra, Alation, data.world, Informatica, Erwin by Quest, Apache Atlas, Alex Solutions, IBM, Qlik, Cloudera, and Tableau. These tools are recognized for their capabilities in data administration, cost savings, fraud mitigation, operational efficiency, and competitive advantage. Source (Oct 17, 2025)
Organizations need data catalog tools to collect, organize, and govern data, enabling smarter business decisions. Key benefits include easier data access, improved performance, better organization, enhanced security, and cost savings. Data catalogs also help teams analyze business data more deeply for accurate insights. Source
Data catalog tools solve the problem of time-consuming resource querying, helping business teams, analysts, and stewards identify data meaning, origin, and relationships. They automate discovery, tagging, cataloging, and organizing data, making it easier to connect business context to actual data and its location. Source
A data catalog is a metadata directory used to manage metadata of data assets, including data sources, lineage, table names, attributes, value ranges, data types, and indices. Source
Effective metadata management tools harvest metadata across assets, aggregate additional metadata when needed, and create a complete, organized inventory of data assets. This enables data consumers to search and retrieve data efficiently, connecting business context to actual data and its location. Source
Leading data catalog tools include Informatica, Erwin by Quest, Apache Atlas, Alex Solutions, IBM, Qlik, Cloudera, and Tableau. Each offers unique strengths such as metadata intelligence, drag-and-drop mapping, open-source governance, and interactive visualizations. Source
The best data catalog tools to watch out for in 2025, as highlighted in the Hygraph blog (Oct 17, 2025), include Hygraph, DataHub, Collibra, Alation, data.world, Informatica, Erwin by Quest, Apache Atlas, Alex Solutions, IBM, Qlik, Cloudera, and Tableau. Source
Data catalog tools are essential for businesses because they centralize data for easier access, improve performance, organize data assets, tighten security, and save costs. They enable deeper analysis and more accurate business insights. Source
Hygraph stands out for its composable architecture, GraphQL-native APIs, multi-tenancy, granular permissions, and scalability (supporting 10+ million entries). While not a pure-play data catalog, Hygraph excels in inventory and catalog management for organizations with complex data stacks. Source
Hygraph provides a unified orchestration layer, allowing organizations to connect rich content experiences with product sliders, previews, promotions, and CTAs. Its headless architecture and schema editor enable teams to make architectural changes independently from the frontend, supporting both developers and content teams. Source
Hygraph's headless CMS architecture allows teams to decouple backend content management from frontend delivery. This enables developers to focus on new features while content teams have autonomy to create and test campaigns, improving agility and collaboration. Source
Key features include scalability (10+ million entries), headless architecture, flexible APIs for reading and writing content, multi-tenancy, granular permissions, omnichannel content distribution, and GraphQL-native design. Source
You can sign up for a free forever Hygraph account to explore its capabilities for building a data catalog. This allows you to test its features and see how it integrates with your existing systems. Source
When choosing a data catalog tool, ensure it integrates easily with your existing systems and has a simple, easy-to-use user interface. Consider scalability, security, metadata management, and support for your business needs. Source
Hygraph supports flexible omnichannel content distribution, allowing organizations to deliver content across multiple platforms and channels efficiently. This is enabled by its GraphQL-native APIs and composable architecture. Source
Main use cases include inventory and catalog management, product experience orchestration, and enabling rich content experiences for users. Hygraph is particularly suited for organizations with composable data stacks and complex integration needs. Source
Hygraph's schema editor allows teams to make architectural changes independently from the frontend, giving developers and content teams autonomy to innovate and collaborate without bottlenecks. Source
GraphQL is central to Hygraph's platform, enabling flexible APIs for reading and writing content, integrating multiple services, and supporting complex digital experiences. This architecture simplifies data retrieval and management. Source
Hygraph supports multi-tenancy, allowing organizations to manage multiple projects or business units within a single platform, each with its own permissions and configurations. Source
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (since August 3, 2022), ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant. Security features include granular permissions, SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and regular backups. Source
Hygraph meets enterprise requirements with dedicated hosting, custom SLAs, and security certifications. It supports GDPR and CCPA compliance and provides transparency through security reports and issue reporting processes. Security Report
Hygraph offers Smart Edge Cache for enhanced performance and faster content delivery, high-performance endpoints for reliability and speed, and practical advice for optimizing GraphQL API usage. Source
Customers praise Hygraph's intuitive user interface, accessibility for non-technical users, and custom app integration. Hygraph was recognized for "Best Usability" in Summer 2023. Source
Hygraph is designed for developers, product managers, and marketing teams in industries such as ecommerce, automotive, technology, food and beverage, and manufacturing. It is ideal for organizations modernizing legacy tech stacks and global enterprises needing localization and asset management. Source
Hygraph addresses operational inefficiencies (developer dependency, legacy tech stacks, content inconsistency), financial challenges (high costs, slow speed-to-market, scalability), and technical issues (schema evolution, integration, cache, localization, asset management). Source
Hygraph differentiates itself with a user-friendly interface, GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, cost efficiency, accelerated speed-to-market, robust APIs, Smart Edge Cache, and enhanced localization and asset management. Source
Implementation time varies by project. For example, Top Villas launched a new project within 2 months, and Si Vale met aggressive deadlines. Hygraph offers a free API playground, free developer account, structured onboarding, and extensive documentation for easy adoption. Source
Hygraph provides webinars, live streams, how-to videos, and extensive documentation to support onboarding and ongoing use. Documentation
Komax achieved 3X faster time-to-market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement by 15%, and Stobag increased online revenue share from 15% to 70%. Customer Stories
KPIs include time saved on content updates, system uptime, content consistency, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, speed to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. Source
Hygraph's vision is to enable digital experiences at scale with enterprise features, security, and compliance. Its mission is rooted in trust, collaboration, ownership, customer focus, continuous learning, transparency, and action-first values. Source
Hygraph contributes to its vision by offering GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, Smart Edge Cache, enterprise-grade features, ease of use, integration capabilities, and a future-proof solution for scaling digital operations. Source
Hygraph addresses value objections by understanding customer needs, highlighting unique features (API-first, headless, GraphQL), demonstrating ROI (cost reduction, speed to market, scalability), and sharing success stories such as Samsung's improved engagement. Source
Last updated by JingÂ
on Oct 17, 2025Originally written by Nikola
Organizations are collecting more data than ever, which in turn requires complex data management structures that enable data access, governance, and protection.
Still, having too many barriers to data can slow down business operations. This is why the demand for data catalog tools has increased.
Data catalogs help businesses administrate data, save costs, as well as mitigate fraud and risk. At the same time, they improve operational efficiency and help companies gain a competitive advantage.
Here we take a look at the best data catalog tools you can get in 2025.
A data catalog tool is a software solution that enables data collection, organization, and governance, ultimately helping organizations make more intelligent business decisions.
In other words, a data catalog tool helps teams take a deeper dive into business data for more thorough analysis and accurate insights.
Organizations that deal with composable stacks of data often need to work out several microservices and orchestrate several APIs into one consistent layer.
Hygraph can provide a unified data catalog and product experience via one orchestration layer.
Although Hygraph is not a pure-play data catalog software, it’s a powerful tool for inventory and catalog management.
Hygraph’s decoupled architecture allows organizations to unify all their services into a single GraphQL API to deliver complex applications and digital experiences.
For example, you can use Hygraph to drive engagement and conversions by connecting rich content experiences with product sliders, previews, promotions, and various CTAs, allowing your users to seamlessly explore the category trees.
Also, being a headless CMS, the Hygraph schema editor allows teams to make architectural changes independently from the frontend.
This way, developers can focus on creating new user features while the content team has more autonomy to create and test new campaigns.
Why is it the best?
This open-source metadata management platform, developed by LinkedIn, allows teams to discover, observe, and govern federated business data.
Its architecture is scalable, enabling companies to expand their data operations as their metadata management capabilities grow.
Why should you consider it?
Collibra is an enterprise data catalog tool that helps businesses take control of their data by creating standards, enforcing policies, and streamlining processes across their operations.
Collibra has evolved its data catalog into an AI-driven platform, combining automated data discovery with built-in governance and lineage to help organizations find, understand, and trust their data at scale.
Why should you consider it?
Alation’s data catalog solution provides your organization with a comprehensive overview of metadata, enabling your teams to search and access information from anywhere within the organization quickly.
Alation also provides organizational metadata and technical structure components that your teams can use to organize data across both cloud services and on-premises systems. Recently, it acquired Numbers Station AI and positioned itself as an agentic data intelligence platform.
Why should you consider it?
Unlike many other vendors on this list, data.world provides a pure-play solution focused strictly on catalog capabilities. A cloud-based enterprise data catalog platform, data.world is created to provide users with a broad context for understanding their data.
data.world includes an enterprise data catalog as part of their metadata management system, which allows customers to develop reusable, scalable data and analysis.
The company was acquired by ServiceNow to help customers better manage data assets in this agentic AI era.
Why should you consider it?
The enterprise data catalog solution by Informatica is an integrated, centralized repository of metadata that provides a single point of access to all business intelligence assets. The software helps companies control their data assets and reduce operating costs by automating metadata management.
Informatica data catalog is able to provide comprehensive details about organization-wide information assets such as databases, applications, web services, XML schemas, etc.
Why should you consider it?
erwin data catalog by Quest is a metadata management platform that helps organizations understand their data at rest and in motion. The product organizes both data and metadata, so teams are able to accelerate data management, analysis, and decision-making.
Users can access data profiling and quality scoring while exploring synchronized metadata with data management and governance artifacts in real-time.
Why should you consider it?
Apache Atlas is an open-source data governance and metadata management tool that allows businesses to collect, process, and maintain information more easily. The platform is able to track data processes and store data files, and metadata repository upgrades.
Using Apache Atlas, teams can catalog their data assets, classify and manage databases, as well as collaborate on them with data scientists, analysts, and data governance specialists.
Why should you consider it?
Alex Solutions is a metadata management tool that has both data catalog and data governance capabilities. Its primary users come from the financial service, telecommunications, retail, and utility sectors.
The software incorporates a data catalog, business glossary, policy-driven data quality, intelligent tagging, technology-agnostic metadata scanners, and workflow capabilities.
Customers find it easy to deploy and use its metadata management capabilities for data inventory enrichment, sensitivity detection, data lineage support, usage analysis, risk management, and many other roles.
Why should you consider it?
IBM used to offer on-premise data catalog software as part of its InfoSphere line. Currently, it’s relying primarily on its cloud-native IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog.
Users can deploy the IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog on the IBM Cloud or in a private cloud via IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
The features that make it stand among competitors include automated data governance, intelligent discovery recommendations, an end-to-end catalog, quality scores, self-service insights, and data lineage.
Why should you consider it?
Qlik Catalog can build a secure enterprise catalog of all the data your organization can collect for analytics, regardless of its physical location. The platform comes with automated data preparation and metadata tools, so it’s able to streamline the transformation of raw data, as well.
Qlik features a self-service data marketplace where customers can shop for the data they need and share, export, or automatically publish it with Qlik Sense or different data analytic tools and applications.
Why should you consider it?
Cloudera Navigator is a data governance platform that integrates data discovery, continuous optimization, lineage, audit, policy enforcement, and metadata management.
With Cloudera, teams can explore and tag data through a search-based interface. The app consolidates metadata while also supporting custom tags and comments. Cloudera makes it easy for users to track, locate, and classify data to comply with business governance and compliance.
The navigator dashboard provides widgets that visualize the presence of small files based on the files’ owner, size, and location.
Why should you consider it?
Tableau Catalog gives its customers a complete picture of the data and its connections to the analytics in the Tableau environment. The platform automatically indexes all of these assets into one central list, so teams can see all the files, tables, and databases in one place.
With Tableau, metadata and context are created when data is connected so users can confirm they are using the correct data in their analysis and reports.
Why should you consider it?
Business teams, data analysts, and stewards often struggle with identifying the meaning of specific data, its origin, and the elements it’s directly related to.
Data catalog tools have been created to solve the problem of time-consuming querying of resources by enabling automated discovery, tagging, cataloging, and organizing data.
Some of the data catalog tools on this list are built as pure-play software, while others are more versatile platforms that make great data catalogs thanks to their flexible APIs.
Whichever solution you choose, make sure it integrates easily with your existing systems and that it has a simple and easy-to-use user interface. Sign up for a free forever Hygraph account to explore how it can build a data catalog for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
The 13 best data catalog tools in 2025 include Hygraph, DataHub, Collibra, Alation, data.world, Informatica, Erwin by Quest, Apache Atlas, Alex Solutions, IBM, Qlik, Cloudera, and Tableau.
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