Master And Customer Data Management — enterprise 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.
Golden Record Storage (Transactional DB)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Free: 500MB DB, 1GB storage, 50k MAU | Pro $25/mo 8GB DB, $0.125/GB storage over, $0.00325/hr compute over. Neon Free: 3GB storage, 10 projects, 100hr compute/mo | Launch $19/mo 10GB, $1.50/GB over. RDS db.t4g.micro ~$13/mo, Aurora Serverless v2 $0.12/vCPU-hr + $0.10/GB-mo
MDM Platform / Core Engine
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 limitsPimcore OSS free self-host. CluedIn Free: 50k records, 1M relationship edges. Ataccama Free: 100k records profiling. Reltio: ~$120k/yr base for 2M profiles, $18k/yr per extra 1M. Informatica MDM SaaS $60k/yr min, $0.08/record/yr over. Tamr $80k/yr base.
CDP / Event Ingestion & Collection
Lets external services notify you of events in real time. Core to integrating payments, KYC, and third-party workflows.Pricing & free-tier limitsSegment Free: 1,000 MTU/mo | Team $120/mo 10k MTU included $0.12/MTU over. RudderStack Free: 500k events/mo Cloud | Pro $500/mo 2.5M events $80 per 500k over. mParticle Starter $2,000/mo 10M events.
Data Matching & Deduplication Engine
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 limitsSenzing Community: 500k records free self-hosted | Team $600/mo 5M evals. Splink OSS free (Spark/DuckDB). Tamr Cloud: $3,500/mo base 1M records, $0.002/record matching over. Ringlead $1,200/mo.
API Gateway for MDM CRUD 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. AWS API Gateway Free: 1M calls/mo 12mo | then $1.00/Million REST, $0.90/Million HTTP + data. Kong Konnect $250/mo 500k calls. Apigee X $4.50/unit (call-volume based) min $500/mo.
Search & Indexing for Master Data Lookup
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeilisearch OSS free. Typesense Cloud Free: 100k docs 500MB | $40/mo 1M docs. Elasticsearch Serverless: ~$95/mo 2GB storage+compute. Algolia Free: 10k records 100k ops/mo | Starter $89/mo 100k records 1M ops, $0.60/1k records over.
Caching Layer for Golden Records
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Free: 10k commands/day 256MB | Pay-as-you-go $0.20/100k commands. Redis Cloud Free: 30MB | Essentials $5/mo 100MB. ElastiCache Serverless: $0.125/GB-hr + $0.0034/100k ECPUs, ~$30/mo minimal cache.
Background Jobs for Matching & Stewardship Jobs
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 limitsInngest Free: 500k steps/mo, 30-day history | Hobby $20/mo 5M steps $40/M over. QStash Free: 500 msgs/day | Pro $10/mo 30k msgs $1/6k over. SQS Free: 1M msgs/mo | then $0.40/M. Temporal Cloud $25/mo base 5k actions.
Object Storage for Raw Source & Attachments
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/mo | Paid $0.015/GB-mo storage, $0 egress. B2 Free: 10GB | $6/TB-mo $0.01/GB download. S3 Free Tier 5GB 12mo | $0.023/GB-mo, $0.09/GB egress, Glacier $0.004/GB-mo.
Secrets Management for MDM Connections
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 Free: 3 projects unlimited seats | Cloud $19/mo/seat Pro. Doppler Free: 50 secrets, 12 projects | Team $8/user/mo. AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls. Vault Cloud $0.03/hr ~$22/mo cluster.
Backup & Disaster Recovery for Golden Records
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsWAL-G OSS free (S3 target cost). Supabase Pro PITR 7-day $25/mo included, 14-day $100/mo addon. AWS BackupFree: 5GB backup free | RDS backup storage $0.095/GB-mo over free tier. SimpleBackups $19/mo 10 jobs.
Identity Resolution & Identity Graph
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsFullContact Free: 500 matches/mo | Starter $199/mo 2,500 matches $0.08/match over. TransUnion $0.12/lookup min $1k/mo. LiveRamp $5k/mo min + CPM. Zingg OSS free (Spark).
Webhooks & Change Data Distribution (Reverse ETL)
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 limitsSvix Free: self-host OSS free | Cloud Free 5k msgs/mo | Starter $99/mo 500k messages $0.00004/msg over. Hookdeck Free: 100 events/day | Team $89/mo 500k events. EventBridge Free: all state changes $1.00/M events.
Audit Logs / WORM Immutable Ledger (Who Changed Master Data)
Controls who can do what inside your admin tooling. Limits blast radius if an account is compromised.Pricing & free-tier limitsimmudb OSS free, Cloud $50/mo 2GB immutable. QLDB $0.30/M I/O + $0.15/GB-mo. BetterStack Free: 7-day 3GB | $24/mo 30GB 30-day. pgaudit OSS free.
Data Quality & Validation Engine
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 limitsGreat Expectations + Soda Core free self-host. Soda Cloud Free: 2k checks/mo | Pro $400/mo 50k checks $0.008/check over. Monte Carlo $800/mo base 10 tables, $35k/yr typical. Ataccama DQ part of $60k/yr bundle.
ETL / ELT & Reverse ETL Sync for Master Data
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 limitsAirbyte OSS free self-host. Airbyte Cloud Free: 500k credits/mo | Team $50/mo per 1k credits $0.08/credit over. Fivetran Free Tier 500k MAR/mo 14-day | Standard $500/mo 500k MAR $0.40/MAR over. Census $350/mo sync.
Monitoring & Observability for MDM Pipeline
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 | Pro $29/mo user + usage. Datadog APM $31/host/mo $0.10/GB logs ingested. New Relic Free: 100GB ingest/mo | Standard $400/mo per user + ingest.
Queue & Event Streaming for Master Data Events
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Kafka Free: 10k msgs/day | $10/mo 1M msgs. Confluent Free: $400 credit, then $0.11/GB ingress + $0.10/GB egress, $0.20/GB storage-mo. Redpanda Serverless $0.15/M TU. MSK Serverless $0.30/GB processed ~$200/mo minimal.
Privacy Consent Management & Preference Center
Keeps you secure and compliant with regulations. Required for enterprise customers and handling sensitive data.Pricing & free-tier limitsKlaro OSS free. Osano Free: 5k visits/mo | Pro $199/mo 500k visits. CookieYes Free: 15k pages. OneTrust Consent: $6k/yr base 500k IDs, $0.006/consent over, total ~$30k/yr avg. Ketch Free: 100k visitors/mo | Pro $300/mo.
GDPR/CCPA Compliance & Data Discovery (PII Scanner)
Keeps you secure and compliant with regulations. Required for enterprise customers and handling sensitive data.Pricing & free-tier limitsPiiano Vault OSS free. BigID Small $15k/yr 1M records scanned. OneTrust Data Discovery $40k/yr base 2M records, $12k per additional 1M. Spirion $25k/yr entry. Open source PII scanners free compute cost only.
Data Lineage & Catalog for Master Data
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, Cloud $30/user/mo. OpenMetadata OSS free. Atlan Free: 5 users 1M assets | Growth $349/user/mo min 5 users. Alation $96k/yr min. Collibra $150k/yr typical.
Master Data Stewardship Workflow & Ticketing
Understands your users and supports them. Drives product decisions and retention.Pricing & free-tier limitsPlane Cloud Free: 12 members | Pro $8/user/mo. Linear Free: 250 issues. Jira Free: 10 users | Premium $7.75/user/mo. ServiceNow Starter $100/user/mo min 20 users = $2k/mo.
CDC (Change Data Capture) for Source Systems
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 OSS free (EC2/VM cost ~$20/mo). Estuary Free: 10GB processed/mo | Pro $100/mo 100GB $1/GB over. HVR $1,200/mo per source. Striim $2,500/mo base.
Graph Database for Relationship & Householding
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeo4j Community free self-host. AuraDB Free: 200k nodes 400k rels | Pro $65/mo 1M nodes. Memgraph Free: 100k nodes | Cloud $100/mo 1M nodes. Neptune Serverless $0.11/vCPU-hr ~$90/mo + storage.
Data Encryption & KMS for PII / Golden Records
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 limitsAWS KMS Free Tier 20k req/mo | $1/key/mo + $0.03/10k requests. Vault OSS free. Cloud HSM $1.45/hr ~$1k/mo. GCP KMS $1/key-version/mo $0.03/10k ops.
Rate Limiting & WAF for MDM APIs
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: WAF 1 custom rule, unlimited DDoS | Pro $20/mo 20 rules. AWS WAF $5/rule/mo + $1/M requests. Cloudflare Business $200/mo 100 rules. Akamai ~$3,500/mo min.
Schema Registry for Master Data Models
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 limitsApicurio OSS free. Confluent Free: 1 schema registry (up to 100 schemas) included $400 credit. Confluent Cloud SR $0.00 hosted (count against Kafka fee) | Glue Registry free $1/M API calls. Self-host cost ~$10/mo VM.
CI/CD & Rules Versioning for MDM Matching Rules
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free: 2,000 Actions min/mo, 500MB storage | Team $4/user/mo 3,000 min. CircleCI Free: 6k credits/mo | Performance $15/mo 30k credits. Harness Free: 1k builds/mo | Pro $100/mo.
Analytics Warehouse for Master Data Reporting & Steward Metrics
Understands your users and supports them. Drives product decisions and retention.Pricing & free-tier limitsMotherDuck Free: 10GB storage, 10GB queried/day | Pro $20/mo. BigQuery Free: 10GB storage + 1TB queries/mo | then $0.02/GB storage $6.25/TB query. Snowflake $40 credits free | Standard $2/credit compute + $23/TB-mo storage.
Reference Data & Taxonomy Store (Codelists, Lookups)
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 limitsOpenRefine OSS free. Flatfile Free: 100 imports/mo | Starter $300/mo 1k imports. Informatica Reference Data part of $60k/yr suite. Profisee Platform $50k/yr entry.
Vector Database for AI-Powered Entity Resolution & Semantic Match
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsQdrant OSS free. Cloud Free: 1GB RAM 4GB disk | Pro $25/mo 8GB RAM $0.60/GB storage over. Pinecone Free: 1 index 100k vectors | Starter $70/mo 5M vectors. pgvector on Supabase included in DB cost.
Data Masking, Tokenization & PII Vault
Stores API keys and credentials safely, separate from your code. Leaking secrets is one of the most common breaches.Pricing & free-tier limitsPiiano Vault OSS free self-host | Cloud $500/mo base 1M vault ops. Basis Theory Free: 10k tokens | Startup $200/mo 100k tokens $0.0015/token over. Skyflow $1,500/mo base + $0.10/1k API calls. VGS $2k/mo min.
Access Control / RBAC, SSO & Steward Permissions
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsKeycloak OSS free. Auth0 Free: 7.5k MAU, 1 SSO App | Pro $23/mo 500 MAU $0.05/MAU over, Enterprise SSO $250/mo. WorkOS Free: 1M MAU free SSO tier | Pro $250/mo + $8/SSO connection. Okta $2/user/mo SSO MFA.
Log Aggregation & SIEM for MDM Audit & Security
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsSigNoz OSS free self-host | Cloud Free 30GB | Team $199/mo 100GB $0.50/GB over. Axiom Free: 500GB/mo ingest? 0.5TB? Actually 500MB day. Splunk Cloud $15/GB ingested typical min $100/mo. Datadog Log Mgmt $0.10/GB ingested + retention.
Multi-Region Replication & Global Golden Record Sync
Runs in multiple regions for speed and resilience. Enterprise-grade reliability and the hardest to retrofit.Pricing & free-tier limitsTurso Free: 9GB storage 500 DBs | Scaler $29/mo 24GB. CockroachDB Free: 10GB, 50M RUs/mo | Standard $95/mo 50GB. Aurora Global DB $0.20/GB cross-region transfer + multi-region instance cost ~$400/mo for 2 regions. Fly Postgres $2.50/vCPU/mo per region.
DNS, Custom Domain & Traffic Manager for MDM APIs
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 Free: unlimited DNS queries + DDoS | Pro $20/mo. Route53 $0.50/zone/mo + $0.40/M queries, Global Accelerator $0.025/hr + $0.015/GB transfer. NS1 Free: 500k queries/mo | $50/mo 10M queries.
Historical Archival & Cold Storage for Master Data Versions
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsGlacier Instant $0.004/GB-mo retrieval $0.03/GB, Deep Archive $0.00099/GB-mo retrieval $0.025/GB. R2 cold $0.015/GB-mo zero egress. Restic OSS free. Veeam Backup for S3 $20/mo per bucket.
Compliance Audit Automation & Certification Evidence (SOC2, GDPR Art.30)
Keeps you secure and compliant with regulations. Required for enterprise customers and handling sensitive data.Pricing & free-tier limitsOpenComply OSS free. Vanta Starter $8k/yr 10 employees | Growth $20k/yr 50 seats + $120/employee over. Drata $12k/yr base 100 employees, $20k/yr 250 employees. OneTrust GRC $35k/yr base. BigID Compliance add-on $25k/yr.
How this enterprise master and customer data management checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a enterprise master and customer data management 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.