Data lineage tools are a great tool for any tech company’s data stack. With data lineage tools, companies can more easily track the movement of data through various systems, databases and applications. They can help your company better understand and manage data. But there are a lot of data lineage tool options out there. Narrowing down the best option for your company can be difficult.

In this blog, we’ll break down the top data lineage tools used by growing tech companies in 2024. Read on to learn more about each of these tools and how they can help your company with data lineage.

Benefits of data lineage tools

To understand why data lineage tools are so useful for modern tech companies, let’s consider the definition of data lineage again. As we know, data lineage allows companies to, in its simplest form, track data throughout its entire life cycle. Meaning data teams can see how data was created, where it came from, how it has been modified and much more. With companies taking in more data than ever, ensuring that data is organized, accurate and trackable is essential. Here are some of the primary reasons data lineage tools are useful:

• Identify errors and troubleshoot — When you can trace data back to its source and see the transformations it went through, it’s easier to identify errors and find out where they happened. Companies can understand ways to ensure their data is more accurate and complete in the future.
• Improved data management — When you’re able to troubleshoot your issues and identify flaws, you can improve your company’s data management processes over time. Data lineage allows you to fix what’s wrong with your data now while also reducing your error rate in the future.
• Better insights — When data teams can look closely at the sources, transformations and destinations of data, they can gain more insights into that data. They can find new relationships between data sets, identify ways to optimize your data pipeline and more.
• Data visibility and compliance — When you can pull up the full history of your data, it’s easier to adhere to data compliance and regulations. Your data team will be more empowered to improve your data governance strategy, ensuring your data is securely flowing through all touchpoints and finding the best ways data should be used. 

In short, data lineage tools improve data accuracy, security, governance, insights and much more. The countless benefits of data lineage tools make them well worth the investment. The only decision left is what data lineage tool you should use.

How to choose the right data lineage tool for your company

When choosing a data lineage tool, there are several steps you can take to make the best decision. Here are some best lineage practice tips for choosing the best data lineage tool for your organization:

1. Compatibility with Data Stack: Ensure the tool integrates with your current data systems, including databases, data lakes, ETL pipelines, and cloud platforms.
2. Visualization Capabilities: Look for tools that provide clear, interactive visualizations of data flows, making it easy to track data from its source through transformations.
3. Automation and Scalability: Choose a tool that can automatically capture and update lineage as data changes, and one that can scale with your data volume as your organization grows.
4. Compliance and Auditing: If your company needs to meet regulatory standards, ensure the tool offers features like data traceability, audit logs, and version control to support compliance efforts.
5. User Experience: Opt for a tool that is intuitive and user-friendly, accessible to both technical and non-technical team members.
6. Cost and Support: Evaluate the tool’s pricing model, ensuring it fits your budget, and assess the level of customer support and resources provided by the vendor.

Choosing the right data lineage tool is an important decision, but it doesn’t have to be a difficult one. By following these steps and doing some careful research, you can find a tool that will be the best for your organization.

List of top data lineage tools

Secoda

Secoda is a comprehensive data management platform designed to empower teams with AI-powered solutions for data discovery, governance, and collaboration. It enables users to easily search, analyze, and share data across multiple systems, making it a powerful tool for self-service analytics. Secoda’s customizable workspace fosters better collaboration and enhances data governance.

Key Benefits of Secoda:

• Empower data-driven decisions with self-service analytics
• Seamlessly search data across all your sources
• Analyze both structured and unstructured data
• Customize workspaces for collaboration
• Improve data governance and integrity

"The catalog and metrics feature has enabled our more technical users (analysts/data scientists) to easily dive into data lineage and to quickly understand what is driving our models, metrics and reports." - Secoda user

"Secoda makes it extremely easy for us keep our data searchable and easy to access. We are now much less worried when we need to onboard or offboard an employee because we have great knowledge retention and easily trackable lineage and understandable docs." - Secoda user

Informatica Metadata Manager

Informatica Metadata Manager is an enterprise metadata management tool built to help organizations harness the value of active metadata. Informatica’s tool offers data lineage tracking, data cataloging and numerous other features. It also provides visualization tools for helping users better understand the relationship between data.

Here are some of the benefits of Informatica Metadata Manager:

• Provides complete views of data lineage
• Enables improved data governance and data quality
• Tools for visualizing and understanding data flows and relationships
• Tools to enable self-service analytics and data democratization
• Speeds up data integration

Informatica Metadata Manager provides companies with a free trial. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Alation

Alation is a data catalog tool that enables lineage tracking and other features to improve data governance and collaboration in organizations. Alation is known for its intuitive interface that helps users discover, understand and use company data assets.

Here are some of the benefits of Alation:

• Helps users understand and govern data
• Supports cloud data migration
• Tools to increase data accuracy and analytics
• Machine learning to assist with data navigation
• Tools for collaboration and secure data-sharing

Alation provides companies with a demo of its data catalog solution. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Collibra

Collibra is a comprehensive data governance platform that includes data lineage tracking, data cataloging and other features to help organizations manage and use their data assets more effectively. Collibra features a user-friendly interface and easily integrates with other data tools and platforms.

Here are some of the benefits of Collibra:

• Automated lineage mapping and maintenance
• Improved analytics with automated lineage diagrams
• Enables lineage to be accessible at scale to all of your users
• Tools to improve data governance and compliance
• Visibility into upstream and downstream analytics

Collibra provides companies with a free trial. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Lumada Data Catalog

Lumada Data Catalog is a tool built by the company Hitachi Vantara after it acquired Waterline Data. Powered by Waterline Data’s data cataloging, this tool includes data lineage tracking and other features to improve data discovery and governance. Lumada uses a machine learning-based approach to data discovery and classification, making it easier for users to find and understand data assets.

Here are some of the benefits of Lumada:

• Unify data across data sources and systems
• Machine learning tools for data discovery and management 
• Unique data ‘fingerprint’ tool to track relational lineage
• Tools to automate data cataloging tasks

Lumada provides companies with a free trial. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog is a metadata management tool from IBM that includes data lineage tracking and other features to help organizations with data governance and compliance. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to visualize and understand data relationships and dependencies.

Here are some of the benefits of the IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog:

• Tools for searching and visualizing data
• Tools for establishing data ownership and documentation
• Data dictionary features for defining data classifications
• Cloud migration

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog provides companies with a demo. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

MANTA

MANTA is a data lineage tool that provides end-to-end lineage tracking, impact analysis and other features to help organizations with data governance and data management. It offers integrations with a wide range of data platforms and tools, making it easier for organizations to manage their data assets.

Here are some of the benefits of MANTA:

• Tools for automated data mapping
• Reporting tools for impact analysis
• Discover relational data between workspaces, systems and data objects
• Enables users to generate insights for data-driven decisions

MANTA provides companies with a free demo. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Precisely

Precisely, formerly Syncsort Zen, is a metadata management tool that includes data lineage tracking, data cataloging and other features to help organizations with data governance and data management. It provides a graphical interface that allows users to visualize and understand data relationships and dependencies.

Here are some of the benefits of Precisely:

• Dynamic data catalog for finding and leveraging data
• Machine learning and AI for identifying and tagging assets
• Intuitive UI to enable discovery for all users
• Tools to visualize data relationships and lineage
• Automated metadata

Precisely provides companies with a free trial. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Octopai

Octopai’s Data Lineage XD platform is a data lineage tool that includes data discovery, lineage tracking and other features to help organizations with data governance and data management. It provides a user-friendly interface and supports integration with a wide range of data platforms and tools.

Here are some of the benefits of Octopai:

• End-to-end lineage across data systems
• Column-to-column level lineage
• Column-level lineage within ETL processes
• Automates lineage reporting and analytics 
• Speeds up data integration

Octopai provides companies with a free demo. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Talend Data Catalog

Talend Data Catalog is a data catalog that includes data lineage tracking, data discovery and other features to help organizations with data governance and data management. It offers a machine learning-based approach to data discovery and classification, making it easier for users to find and understand their data assets.

Here are some of the benefits of Talend Data Catalog:

• Automated data crawling
• Machine learning-driven data classification
• End-to-end data lineage 
• Custom user access controls for better security and compliance

Talend Data Catalog provides companies with a free trial. Pricing depends on the needs of your company.

Enhancing data integrity and insights with modern data lineage tools

Data teams are excited about the capabilities of modern data lineage tools for many reasons. These tools help companies track the source of their data, and the transformations data makes as it flows through your organization. This gives data teams insight into relationships between their data sets. It also gives them a way to backtrack and understand why errors occurred in their data analytics processes.

Data can flow through multiple touchpoints, which is why it’s important to have historical context and the ability to track data throughout its life cycle. When companies can track and visualize data through migrations, updates and other events, they can ensure their data is accurate and data integrity is maintained through all of its changes and transformations.

Data lineage tools automate much of the data lineage process. With these tools, data teams can have more confidence that their data is reliable and up-to-date. Your data is invaluable, so you want to ensure you give your data teams everything they can to maintain its integrity and gain the best insights from it.

Try Secoda for Free

If you want to get started with a tool that won’t let you down choose Secoda. Our data management platform is perfect for data discovery, management and collaboration. Secoda makes data easily searchable, so anyone in your company can harness the power of data-driven insights without having to rely on the data team. Secoda also can track your data across multiple systems and sources. 

Tracking data lineage is just one of many features Secoda offers to help your organization make the most of its data. Ready to learn more? Sign up and try Secoda for free today.