2. What is Metaustral?
Enterprise-grade data governance — without the enterprise price tag or months of implementation.
2.1 The Problem We Solve
Traditional data catalog tools were built for large enterprises with dedicated data engineering teams, six-figure budgets, and months to spare for implementation. The result: most mid-sized companies simply go without — their data remains undocumented, ungoverned, and inaccessible to the people who need it most.
Metaustral changes that equation. It delivers the same capabilities — automated discovery, lineage mapping, data quality scoring, audit trails, AI-powered search — in a product you can set up in minutes and that your entire team can use on day one without training.
2.2 Why Metaustral?
| What others charge for | How Metaustral delivers it |
|---|---|
| 6–12 months of implementation | Operational in minutes — no professional services required |
| Dedicated data engineering team to maintain it | Any admin can manage it from a single web panel |
| Enterprise licenses starting at $50,000/year | Plans starting free — scale as you grow |
| Complex integrations and vendor lock-in | Connect to your existing databases in one click |
| Months of user training | Intuitive UI — analysts are productive on day one |
Built for real teams
Whether you're a 3-person startup or a 500-person company, Metaustral fits. The Free plan lets you start documenting your most critical assets today — no credit card, no sales call required.
2.3 Plans & Limits
| Plan | Data Assets | DB Connections | Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Free | Up to 30 | 1 | Up to 3 |
| Starter Starter | Up to 300 | 5 | Up to 10 |
| Pro Pro | Up to 5,000 | 25 | Up to 30 |
| Business Business | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Downgrade safety
If you downgrade to a plan with fewer assets, existing assets are preserved. You won't be able to create new ones until you're within the limit.
2.4 Typical Use Cases
- Data governance programs: assign owners, stewards, and sensitivity to every asset — without a dedicated data governance tool costing six figures.
- Self-service analytics: enable analysts to find and understand datasets without asking the data team, reducing back-and-forth by hours each week.
- Regulatory compliance: track sensitive PII columns and audit every change with a full log — ready for SOX, GDPR, or HIPAA reviews.
- Onboarding acceleration: new team members explore the catalog to understand the data landscape in hours, not weeks — saving days of senior engineer time.
- Impact analysis: use data lineage to understand which reports break when a source table changes, before making the change.
- Metadata synchronization: keep the catalog up to date automatically with scheduled imports — no manual work required.