Alation
Alation is a data intelligence platform that helps organizations harness the power of their data by providing a centralized platform for data cataloging, governance, and collaboration. By enabling users to easily search, understand, and trust their data, Alation empowers organizations to make data-driven decisions with confidence. Through advanced analytics and AI capabilities, Alation helps organizations uncover insights, improve data quality, and drive innovation.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Alation the way a machine reads it — 83 machine-readable artifacts across 12 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Alation scores 54.8/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Alation
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Alation. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 12
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Alation Aggregated Context API
Retrieve aggregated context for AI applications
Alation Columns API
Retrieve column metadata
Alation Custom Fields API
Manage custom field values
Alation Data Quality API
Manage data quality rules and scores
Alation Data Sources API
Manage data source connections
Alation Dataflows API
Manage dataflow lineage objects
Alation Glossary Terms API
Manage business glossary terms
Alation Lineage API
Retrieve lineage paths between catalog objects
Alation Policies API
Manage data governance policies
Alation Schemas API
Retrieve schema metadata
Alation Search API
Search catalog assets
Alation Tables API
Retrieve table metadata
Scroll within the panel for all 12 ·
Open Collections 1
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
API Collection
OPEN COLLECTIONGraphQL 1
Where a provider ships GraphQL, the schema is the contract. We profile it alongside the REST surface so the whole interface is legible in one place.
GraphQL schemas published by this provider.
Alation GraphQL API
Alation is a data intelligence platform for data search and discovery. The API covers data source management, data objects (tables, columns, queries), catalog articles, lineage,...
GRAPHQLPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Alation Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Alation Finops
FINOPSFeatures 8
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Data Catalog
Centralized catalog for data sources, schemas, tables, and columns with rich metadata, descriptions, and custom fields for discoverability.
Data Lineage
End-to-end data lineage tracking via dataflow objects showing how data moves between sources, transformations, and targets.
Business Glossary
Collaborative business glossary for defining standardized terms, abbreviations, and synonyms with stewardship assignments.
Data Quality
Comprehensive data quality rules covering accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness, validity, and custom dimensions.
Governance Policies
Governance policy management for data protection, retention, access control, and quality enforcement across the enterprise.
AI-Powered Search
Full-text and semantic search powered by AI for discovering trusted data assets, with aggregated context for LLM consumption.
Aggregated Context API
Specialized API for AI applications to retrieve structured catalog context for natural language queries, enabling RAG and AI agent workflows.
Custom Fields
Extensible metadata framework with custom fields for any catalog object type, supporting batch updates via the REST API.
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Alation Alation Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Alation API Rules
SPECTRALAlation API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 15
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Column
JSON SCHEMACustomFieldValue
JSON SCHEMADataSource
JSON SCHEMASchema
JSON SCHEMATable
JSON SCHEMADataQualityRule
JSON SCHEMADataQualityScore
JSON SCHEMAGlossaryTerm
JSON SCHEMAPolicy
JSON SCHEMADataflow
JSON SCHEMALineageGraph
JSON SCHEMAArticle
JSON SCHEMAContextRequest
JSON SCHEMASearchResult
JSON SCHEMASearchResults
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 15 ·
JSON Structure 15
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Alation Alation Data Catalog Column Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Data Catalog Data Source Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Data Catalog Schema Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Data Catalog Table Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Governance Data Quality Rule Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Governance Data Quality Score Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Governance Glossary Term Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Governance Policy Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Lineage Dataflow Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Lineage Lineage Graph Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Search Article Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Search Context Request Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Search Search Result Structure
JSON STRUCTUREAlation Alation Search Search Results Structure
JSON STRUCTUREScroll within the panel for all 15 ·
Examples 15
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Scroll within the panel for all 15 ·
Security Posture 4
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Use Cases 5
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Enterprise Data Discovery
Enable data teams to search and find trusted data assets across all data sources using metadata-enriched catalog browsing and search.
Data Governance Compliance
Enforce data governance policies, maintain business glossaries, and track stewardship for regulatory compliance and data accountability.
AI Data Context
Power AI applications with structured catalog context from the aggregated context API, enabling accurate data-aware LLM responses.
Data Lineage Auditing
Track data flows between systems for compliance auditing, impact analysis, and root cause investigation of data quality issues.
Data Quality Management
Define and score data quality rules across catalog objects for continuous quality monitoring and improvement workflows.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Alation — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 3
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 4
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Company 3
The organization behind the API
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