Metaphor vs Select Star: Full Product Comparison
Compare Metaphor vs Select Star to choose the best Data Catalog for your business. Learn about their unique features in our full product comparison.
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Looking for a way to improve the visibility of all data within your company? A data catalog can help everyone find and understand all data to simplify the journey to actually trusting it.
How do you pick the best platform for your business, though?
Enter Metaphor and Select Star – two popular options. Each one stands out with its own unique features and we are here to help you pick the best one for your needs.
This guide is a comprehensive comparison of Metaphor vs Select Star. We’ll take a deep dive into six key categories to crown the big winner:
This is as unbiased as possible to help you make an informed decision, so make sure you take some notes along the way based on the features that matter the most to you.
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Metaphor was founded in 2020 by the team that built Datahub at LinkedIn. The Metadata Platform was only released in January 2022 but it’s already gaining ground.
The “social platform for data” is a powerful centralized solution for data discovery, literacy, and governance.
Metaphor promises to build a culture of data literacy with its features that make the platform accessible to everyone. It offers three types of metadata:
- Technical metadata - all the data your technical team needs (schemas, lineage, data profile, etc)
- Business metadata - make data-driven decisions by adding business context to existing data
- Behavioral / social metadata - make your data more useful by linking it to behaviors that help you access additional insights
Whether it’s the Head of Data or the Business Analyst, everyone can use Metaphor to find and manage the data they need.
Metaphor’s integrations make its daily use easier while its built-in Slack app simplifies communication in your tech stack. It also recently updated its Knowledge Cards, now known as Social Posts, to facilitate capturing and sharing knowledge in a more social way.
Select Star is a comprehensive data discovery platform that helps you find, organize, and understand your data. Founded in 2020, it’s a popular data catalog that aims to help everyone access the data they need.
Its automated platform is quick and easy and many customers find the tool user-friendly.
Data analysts can use Select Star to work more efficiently while everyone in the team can find the right data for different use cases.
Select Star includes features such as data discovery, data lineage, and data governance, promising to streamline the process of data management.
Rating: 4.5/5
Metaphor vs Select Star Comparison
How is Metaphor compared to Select Star in the ease of use? How do the two data catalog tools compare in the number of available integrations they offer? Let’s look at the six key categories and how each tool performs.
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Target Audience
Both tools are built for data teams to help them be more efficient with their data management processes. Whether it’s the Head of Data or the Data Scientist, everyone can create their own use cases to make the most of the platforms.
Select Star makes it clear that it’s made for technical users who want to use a solid data discovery platform. Its ideal audience is comfortable with SQL-based analytics and makes the most of all the available integrations to build a powerful data stack.
In fact, data teams rated it with 9/10 in ‘Ease of Use’ on G2.com.
Metaphor may be built for data teams but it still appeals to business teams as well.
Data Engineers or Data Stewards can use it to build and maintain a self-service data platform. Data consumers like business analysts or BI users can use Metaphor to find, access, and share data in a process that doesn’t require technical expertise.
Technology Integration
You can find many integrations in both platforms – from data warehouses and BI tools to data quality and communication platforms.
Let’s look at the available integrations both for Metaphor and Select Star.
Metaphor Integrations:
- Data Warehouse: AWS Redshift, Azure Synapse, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Looker, Metabase, PowerBI, Tableau, ThoughtSpot
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: AWS Glue, Hive, Unity Catalog, Airflow, dbt
- Authentication: ADFS, Google, OIDC, Okta, SAML
- Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure
- Communication: Microsoft Teams, Slack
- Data Quality: Great Expectations, Lightup, Monte Carlo, Soda.io
Select Star Integrations:
- Data Warehouse: Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, PostgreSQL
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Tableau, PowerBI, Looker, Mode, Sigma, Sisense/Periscope, Metabase, Data Studio
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: dbt
- Notifications: Slack
Metaphor seems to have more integrations in several categories, such as data warehouses and data movement tools while Select Star integrates with more data visualization and BI tools.
You can find more details on the pages for Metaphor’s integrations and Select Star’s integrations.
Pricing
Metaphor does not share any pricing information on its website. Still, you can try it for free and book a demo to see how it works.
Select Star provides more details about the available pricing plans while you can also benefit from a free limited plan. The Light plan is free and it’s limited to 1 data source, up to 100 tables, and 10 users. If you are only getting started or want to try the product, this is a good start. The Pro plan costs $300/month for up to 2 data sources, 250 tables, and 50 users. The Growth plan at $900/month is the most popular plan with 3 data sources and up to 1000 tables and 100 users. There is also the option to create a customized Enterprise plan.
We will give more points to Select Star in this category for the details they are providing on their pricing page and the number of plans they offer.
Ease of Use
This is an important category as it can impact a buyer’s decision to pick one tool over another.
According to G2, the average rating in the Ease of Use for Machine Learning Data Catalogs is 8.6/10. Select Star exceeded this average with a rating of 9/10.
Here’s what one of the reviewers commented about Select Star:
“Select Star gives us a central platform to answer questions about the data in our platform. It is super easy for new users to quickly understand the lineage of data.”
– Verified User in Logistics & Supply Chain
There were a few reviews mentioning a buggy UI and slow load times but still, its overall G2 is higher than the average data catalog tool.
G2 does not have enough information to rate Metaphor in this category. For its rating, we’ll rely on the fact that it offers a simple user interface, many integrations, and that it targets all data consumers within the company to centralize data management.
Review and Ratings
Metaphor is new to the market and it doesn’t have third-party reviews on sites like G2 or Capterra. However, it was recognized as a Data Governance & Catalog leader in the 2023 MAD landscape.
Select Star is rated 4.4/5 on G2 and its most popular features are around metadata management, profiling, and search.
“I'm a new hire and user of Select Star. It's enabled me to more quickly onboard and become better familiarized with our data. In my previous org, we had a custom internal tool that served a similar purpose but was way more basic -- just a searchable catalog of tables. Select Star contains that functionality on top of giving insights into data lineages, joins, and usage.”
– Verified User in Real Estate
At this stage, we are giving more points to Select Star but we expect to see more reviews for Metaphor soon.
Service and Support
How is Metaphor compared to Select Star in the available support for its customers?
Metaphor offers 24/7 support through email while you can submit a request through the Support Center, as well. You can also book a demo if you have questions about the product and want to try it out.
Select Star has a chat on the website and they promise to reply in less than 2 minutes. They also offer dedicated support to Enterprise users. Their rating of 9.6/10 in Quality of Support in G2 indicates that they do their best to support their customers.
Both tools don’t share many details on the level of support they offer for most (or any) of their plans so we’ll only rely on the available information from their websites and the customer reviews.
The Best Data Catalog For Your Business
Select Star vs Metaphor - who is the winner?
Both tools stand out in different categories but Select Star received more points in Pricing, Ease of Use, Reviews and Ratings, and Service Support. Since Metaphor is still new to the market, there may be a shift in the ratings in the future.
Looking for a data catalog that stands out from its competitors across all categories?
CastorDoc has a rating of 4.8/5 on G2 with consistently high ratings on all categories that rank it higher than Select Star. As a proven market leader, users love its user interface, its ease of use, the quality of support, and many features that make the data catalog accessible to everyone in the company.
Ready to improve your data experience? Try CastorDoc today with a free 14-day trial to help your business make smarter decisions.
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« J'aime l'interface facile à utiliser et la rapidité avec laquelle vous trouvez les actifs pertinents que vous recherchez dans votre base de données. J'apprécie également beaucoup le score attribué à chaque tableau, qui vous permet de hiérarchiser les résultats de vos requêtes en fonction de la fréquence d'utilisation de certaines données. » - Michal P., Head of Data.
