Governance And Cataloging — professional stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Data Catalog Platform
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDataHub OSS: Free unlimited assets/users self-hosted / Cloud Free: 2 users, 5k assets, 1k searches/mo / Starter $1,000/mo 10 users 50k assets / Growth $3,500/mo + $75/user. OpenMetadata OSS: Free unlimited / Cloud $1,500/mo 20 users. Atlan: Free 2 users, 10k assets / Starter $1,500/mo 10 users / Growth $3,500/mo + $75/user over 15 / Enterprise $100k-250k/yr ($8.3k-20k/mo). Alation $125k/yr min. Overage: $50 per extra 1k assets, $0.10 per extra 1k API calls.
Metadata Store (Relational DB for Catalog)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeon: Free 0.5GB storage, 100hrs compute, 3 projects, 10 branches / Launch $19/mo 10GB + 300hrs + $5/GB over storage $5 per 100hrs over. Supabase Free 500MB DB, 50k MAU, 2 projects / Pro $25/mo 8GB + $0.125/GB over $0.00365/compute-hr. RDS db.t3.micro Free 750hrs 12mo / $15-75/mo t3.small-medium + $0.115/GB-mo gp3 storage $0.095/GB backup. Self-hosted Postgres $0 + $5-20 VM.
Metadata Search Index
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeilisearch OSS Free unlimited / Cloud Free 100k records, 10k searches/mo / Starter $30/mo 1M records 100k searches + $0.25 per 10k searches over, $0.50 per 100k docs over. Typesense OSS Free / Cloud Free 500k docs 0.5GB / $40/mo 4GB RAM 1M docs + $10/GB over. Elastic Cloud Free 14d trial / Standard $95/mo 2GB RAM 60GB storage + $0.36/hr per 8GB over $0.15/GB transfer. Algolia Free 10k records 10k req/mo / Growth $1.50 per 1k records + $0.50 per 1k searches.
Object Storage for Catalog Exports & Snapshots
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2: Free 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops, 10M Class B ops (S3 compatible) / Pro $5/mo included + $0.015/GB-mo over 10GB, $4.50 per 1M Class A over, $0.36 per 1M Class B over, zero egress. S3 Free Tier 5GB 12mo / Standard $0.023/GB-mo first 50TB + $0.005 per 1k PUT $0.0004 per 1k GET + $0.09/GB egress. MinIO Free unlimited self-hosted + disk cost $6/TB B2.
Secrets Management for Catalog
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsInfisical OSS Free unlimited secrets self-hosted / Cloud Free 3 projects unlimited secrets, 2 envs / Starter $40/mo 10 projects + $8/project over $5 per 100k API calls over. Doppler Free 2 projects 50 secrets / Pro $20/user/mo + $5 per extra 100 secrets. Vault HCP Free dev: 25 secrets, 1 cluster / Standard $0.50/hr ~$365/mo cluster + $0.03 per 10k ops + $0.50 per 100 secrets over, $1/key.
Auth / SSO for Governance Team (Workforce)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsKeycloak Free unlimited users self-hosted $5-15 VM / Auth.js Free. Clerk Free 10k MAU, 1k SSO, 100 orgs / Pro $25/mo + $0.02 per MAU over 10k $0.50 per SSO over 500. Auth0 Free 25k MAU, B2B Free 100 SSO connections / B2C $35/mo 1k MAU + $0.05/MAU over / B2B $150/mo 500 MAU $0.20/MAU. Okta Free 100 MAU / $2-4/user/mo 100 min + $2.50/user SSO $2/user SCIM. Overage SSO $20/conn.
Backup for Catalog DB (WAL + Snapshots)
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitspgBackRest/WAL-G Free self-hosted + storage cost. Backblaze B2 Free 10GB / $6/TB-mo storage + $0.01/GB download free uploads. Restic Free OSS. RDS Backups Free 7d retention 100% DB size / $0.095/GB-mo snapshot storage over + $0.021/GB-mo after, PITR $0. Veeam Community Free 10 workloads / Paid $150/mo per 10 workloads + $50/TB backup storage.
Monitoring & Uptime for Catalog
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsGrafana Cloud Free 10k metrics series, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 3 users / Pro $8/user/mo + 15k metrics included $8 per 1k series over $0.50/GB logs over. Prometheus Free self-hosted. Uptime Kuma Free unlimited monitors self-hosted. UptimeRobot Free 50 monitors 5min checks / $8/mo 200 monitors 1min. Datadog Free 5 hosts 1d / Pro $15/host/mo + $0.10/GB logs $31/host APM $1.70/M spans over. PagerDuty Free 1 user 1 escalation / $29/user/mo.
API Gateway for Catalog APIs
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsKong OSS Free self-hosted unlimited req / Konnect Free 1 runtime 2 services / Plus $250/mo 10M req + $0.50/M over $0.09/GB over. KrakenD OSS Free. Cloudflare API GW Free 1M req/mo proxied + WAF / Pro $20/mo + $5 per 10M req over. AWS API GW Free 1M req 12mo / HTTP $1.00/M req + $0.09/GB transfer over, REST $3.50/M req + cache $0.02/hr. Overage $0.50-3.50/M.
Container Orchestration for Catalog Services
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsK3s/Docker Compose Free self-hosted + VM $5-20/mo Hetzner/DigitalOcean 2GB. Fly.io Free $5/mo credit 3 shared VMs 3GB / Pro $15-40/mo per 1-2GB VM $0.04/GB egress + $0.15/GB disk. Railway Free $5 credit / Pro $20/user/mo + $0.000231/vCPU-min $0.000003/GB-min ~$30/mo 0.5 vCPU. ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU/hr + $0.004445/GB/hr = ~$32/mo per 0.5vCPU 1GB + ALB $22. GKE Autopilot $0.10/hr cluster + $0.044/vCPU/hr $0 5GB disk free ~$35/mo.
CI/CD for Catalog Schemas & Ingestion Jobs
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free 2k Linux min/mo (public unlimited), 500MB packages / Team $4/user/mo 3k min included + $0.008/min Linux over $0.16/GB cache over. Woodpecker Free self-hosted unlimited. CircleCI Free 6k credits/wk ~1k min / $15/mo 30k credits $0.00008/credit over ($6 per 1k min). Buildkite Free 0 agents self-host / $15/agent/mo + $0.005/min over included.
Lineage Tracking (OpenLineage / Marquez)
Rates, labels, and tracking for physical goods. Needed once you actually ship products.Pricing & free-tier limitsMarquez Free self-hosted Postgres backend + $10-40/mo VM for 10k events/d. OpenLineage SDK Free 1M events/mo lib. Monte Carlo Lineage part of $2.5k/mo Starter 100 tables + $20-25 per extra table $0.10 per 1k lineage events over 1M. Atlan Lineage included in Atlan $1.5k-3.5k/mo $0 paid add-on. DataHub Cloud Lineage Free OSS / $50/mo cloud add-on for 100k edges.
Search for Catalog (Dedicated Search Service)
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeilisearch OSS Free self-hosted 10M docs single node / Cloud Free 100k docs 10k searches/mo / Start $30/mo 1M docs 100k searches $0.25 per 10k searches over $0.80 per 100k docs over. Typesense Cloud Free 500k docs 0.5GB / Growth $40/mo 1M docs 2GB + $15/GB over. Algolia Free 10k records 10k search req/mo / Growth $1.50 per 1k records $0.50 per 1k searches over $0.60/1k indexing ops. Elasticsearch $95/mo 2GB RAM.
Audit Logs WORM Storage (Governance Actions - Who Accessed What)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsMinIO WORM Free self-hosted unlimited retention. R2 with Object Lock Free 10GB + $0.015/GB over + $4.50/M Class A writes over. Backblaze B2 Object Lock Free 10GB / $6/TB-mo + $0.01/GB download, $0.005 per 1k writes WORM free config. S3 Object Lock $0.023/GB-mo + $0.03 per 10k WORM writes retention Governance/Compliance mode, min 1d max 100yr. Datadog Audit $0.50 per 10k events after 5k free/month. Retention $0.60/GB-mo long term.
Message Queue for Metadata Ingestion
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsRedpanda OSS Free 1GB RAM self-hosted 1B msgs limited by disk / Cloud Free $0 2GB storage 100MB ingress. NATS OSS Free unlimited. Upstash Kafka Free 10k msgs/day 256KB max / Pay-as-you-go $0.20 per 100k msgs $0.60/GB ingress $0.60/GB storage-mo $0 retention 7d. Confluent Cloud Free $400 credit 3mo / Standard $0.11/GB ingress $0.11/GB egress $0.055/GB-mo storage + $0.20/hr CKU. MSK Serverless $0.30/hr cluster + $0.10/GB in/out $0.10/GB storage.
Cache Layer for Catalog UI (Edge + Read-Through)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsValkey OSS Free self-hosted + VM $5-20. Upstash Redis Free 10k cmds/day 256MB max DB / $0.20 per 100k cmds + $0.30/GB storage after, $10/mo min for 1GB. Dragonfly OSS Free / Cloud Free $35 credit / $18/mo 1GB + $0.40 per 10k ops over. ElastiCache Serverless Free none / $0.125/GB-hr ~$90/mo per 1GB + $0.0034 per 10k ECPUs ~ $15. Momento Free 50GB transfer/mo / $0.50/GB over + $0.03 per 10k requests over.
Reverse Proxy / Ingress Controller
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsCaddy/Traefik/NGINX OSS Free self-hosted + VM. Cloudflare Tunnel Free unlimited tunnels + 0 egress cost. Cloudflare Free CDN + WAF $0 / Pro $20/mo + 20 rules. NGINX Plus $2.5k/yr per instance includes support. AWS ALB $0.0225/hr + $0.008/LCU-hr ~$22/mo + $0.75/hr WAF. Overage LCU $0.008/hr per 1k req.
Log Aggregation for Governance Stack
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsLoki OSS Free self-hosted + $6/TB storage B2 / Grafana Cloud Logs Free 50GB/mo $0 30d / $0.50/GB over after 50GB. Better Stack Free 1GB/day 3d retention 3 sources / Team $24/mo 20GB 30d retention + $2.50/GB over. Datadog Logs $0.10/GB ingest + $0.10/GB 15d retention + $1.70 per 1M scanned in rehydrate, free none. New Relic Free 100GB/mo ingest / $0.30/GB over + $0.00 retention 30d.
DNS & TLS for Catalog Domain (Custom Domain)
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare DNS Free unlimited queries + DDoS + Free TLS Universal 90d auto-renew / Pro $20/mo + WAF 20 rules. Let's Encrypt Free 100 certs/domain/wk 50/wk per domain. Porkbun Domain $10/yr .com renewal $10-12/ yr + free WHOIS. Route 53 $0.50/hosted zone/mo + $0.40/M queries (first 1B) + $0.60/M geo queries, ACM Public Free Private CA $400/mo CA + $0.75 per cert over 1k. NS1 Free 500k queries/mo / $100/mo 10M queries.
Ownership & Stewardship RBAC Engine (Fine-grained)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsCerbos OSS Free self-hosted unlimited checks <100ms / Cloud Free 10k checks/mo 5 PDPs / Team $300/mo 1M checks + $0.15 per 1k checks over. Ory Keto Free. Permit.io Free 1k checks/mo 2 envs / Growth $199/mo 100k checks + $0.50 per 1k over. AuthZed Free 5k checks/mo / Scale $250/mo 500k checks + $0.30 per 1k over. Styra DAS Free 1 system 100k decisions/mo / Enterprise $449/mo per stack + $0.10 per 10k over.
Data Classification Engine (PII Discovery & Tagging)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsPresidio OSS Free self-hosted + VM $10-40/mo scans 1M records/day via spaCy. Piiano Free 25k records/mo PII scan / Pro $500/mo 500k records + $0.001 per record over. BigID Small $1k-1.5k/mo 500k records, 5 sources + $0.002 per record over + $200 per extra source over 5. OneTrust Discovery $12k/yr starter 1M records + $0.003 per record over $2k per connector. BigID Cloud $45k/yr min enterprise.
Compliance Automation Platform (GDPR/CCPA/SOC2)
Keeps you secure and compliant with regulations. Required for enterprise customers and handling sensitive data.Pricing & free-tier limitsOpenComp Free self-hosted SOC2 controls 50 controls. Vanta Free 14d trial / Startup $3k/yr 50 controls, 1 framework / Growth $12k/yr 200 controls 3 frameworks + $50 per control over $100 per extra framework. Drata Starter $6k/yr 50 controls / Growth $20k/yr 250 controls + $75 per control. OneTrust Privacy $10k/yr min + $200 per framework extra, $0.50 per DSAR over 100/mo, $12k per 10k DSR automation. Audit costs SOC2 $15k-30k one-time.
Policy Engine / Access Control (OPA / ABAC for Catalog)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsOPA/OpenFGA Free self-hosted unlimited decisions $5-20 VM. Styra Free 1 system 100k decisions/mo / Team $250/mo 1M decisions $0.10 per 10k over $500 per extra system. Aserto Free 1k decisions/day / Starter $200/mo 500k decisions $0.40 per 1k over. Styra Enterprise $449/mo per 100 services + bundles. Decision logs $0.50/GB.
Data Quality Integration Hub (for Governance Trust Score)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSoda Core OSS Free 500 checks/mo CLI + $10-30 VM. Great Expectations Free. Soda Cloud Free 50k checks/mo 5 datasets / Pro $400/mo 500k checks + 50 datasets + $0.15 per 1k checks over $10 per dataset over. Monte Carlo Free trial 14d / Starter $2.5k/mo 100 tables + $25 per table over $0.10 per 10k query scans over. Anomalo Free POC / $1k/mo 50 tables.
Workflow Orchestration for Curation & Steward Tasks
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsAirflow/Dagster/Prefect OSS Free self-hosted + $20-60 VM. Dagster Cloud Free 1k runs/mo 5 seats / Growth $75/mo 10k runs + $0.01 per run over. Prefect Cloud Free 20k tasks/mo 1 worker / Pro $500/mo 100k tasks + $0.005 per task over ($50 per 10k). Temporal Cloud Free $0 5k actions/mo / $25/mo 25k actions $0.0012 per action over $0.20 per GB storage. Astronomer $500/mo min 3 deployments + $0.15/run hr.
Vector Search for Semantic Discovery (Embeddings DB)
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitspgvector Free OSS ext + Postgres $5-25 VM. Qdrant OSS Free unlimited vectors self-hosted / Cloud Free 1GB cluster 1M vectors 100 req/s / Starter $25/mo 2GB RAM 5M vectors + $0.50/GB over + $0.10 per 1M queries over. Supabase Vector Free 500MB 500k vectors / Pro $25/mo 8GB 10M vectors. Pinecone Free 1 index 2M vectors 155k DUs / Starter $70/mo 5M vectors + $0.20 per 1M writes $0.08 per 1M reads $0.12/GB. Weaviate Cloud Free sandbox 14d / Standard $25/mo 1GB + $0.10 per 10k queries over.
Data Masking / PII Vault for Catalog Previews
Stores API keys and credentials safely, separate from your code. Leaking secrets is one of the most common breaches.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeosync OSS Free self-hosted 1M masked rows/mo single job + $0 VM. Skyflow Free 100k API calls/mo 1k vault records 1 project / $1k/mo 10k records + $0.05 per 1k calls over $0.10 per tokenized record over. Piiano Free 10k tokens 100k API calls / $500/mo 500k tokens + $0.001/token over. BigID Masking $1k/mo min 100k masked cols. Tokens $0.001-0.005 per token over.
Change Data Capture for Metadata Sync (PG/ETL to Catalog)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDebezium Free self-hosted + Kafka/Redpanda $10-40 VM 1M changes/d. pglogical Free. Estuary Flow Free 10GB/mo CDC 10 connectors / Pro $20/mo 100GB + $0.15/GB over $5 per connector over. Fivetran Free 14d trial / Starter $60/mo per connector 500k MARs + $0.10/credit over 500k ~$0.0001/row. Confluent CDC $0.11/GB ingress $0.11 egress $0.35/hr per connector + cluster $0.20/hr. Overage connector hr $0.35.
Secret Rotation & Key Management Service (KMS / HSM)
Stores API keys and credentials safely, separate from your code. Leaking secrets is one of the most common breaches.Pricing & free-tier limitsSOPS Free + age keys $0. Vault OSS Transit Free self-hosted $5-20 VM. AWS KMS Free 20k symmetric req/mo 12mo / $1/key/mo (symmetric) $1.50/asym + $0.03 per 10k requests over $0.50 per 1k rotation. GCP KMS $0.06 per 10k ops after 20k free + $1/key/mo + $6/key version for HSM. Azure Key Vault $0.03 per 10k ops + $1/key/mo + $5/HSM key/mo. Rotation Lambda $0.20 per 1M invoke. Infisical Enterprise $300/mo.
Distributed Tracing for Catalog APIs (Governance Latency)
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsJaeger/Tempo OSS Free self-hosted 10M spans/d $20-50 VM + storage $6/TB. Grafana Cloud Traces Free 50GB traces/mo + 100k metrics / $0.50/GB over after. Honeycomb Free 20M events/mo 60d ret + 1 user / Pro $100/mo 10M events + 2 users + $0.01 per 1k events over. Datadog APM $31/host/mo + $1.70 per 1M spans ingested over 100k/host included. New Relic Free 100GB ingest/mo / $0.30/GB over + $0.00/100GB traces.
How this professional governance and cataloging checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a professional governance and cataloging build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.