Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions in 2025: Key Shifts & Market Signals

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by Emily Winks

Data governance expert

Last Updated on: November 19th, 2025 | 12 min read

What is the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions?

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions is a research framework that evaluates vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision, categorizing them as Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, or Niche Players. The 2025 report shows that metadata management is now essential for AI readiness, shifting from static catalogs to active, AI-driven systems that orchestrate governance, lineage, and quality.

Atlan is recognized as a Leader among metadata management solutions, backed by a 4.6-star Gartner Peer Insights rating, for unifying context through its active metadata lakehouse, broader adoption, faster implementation, and operationalizing AI at scale.

Below: Overview of the report, Essential functions & capabilities, tool insights, and signals for enterprise data leaders.

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions: An overview for interpreting the report

The Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions identifies the key vendors that help organizations capture, unify, and contextualize metadata across enterprise ecosystems.

Gartner evaluates each vendor’s capabilities, strategy, market execution, and product completeness, then groups them into four quadrants:

  • Leaders: Broad, mature metadata capabilities across domains, strong innovation, large customer bases, and alignment with market trends.
  • Challengers: Solid and reliable with established market presence, but lacking the functional breadth, differentiation, and diversity of use cases.
  • Visionaries: Innovative and automation-focused with an understanding of emerging trends, but limited ecosystem partnerships, scalability, and market presence.
  • Niche Players: Strong in specific industries or segments, but limited in emerging technologies, scalability, extensibility, and enterprise-grade deployment readiness.

Gartner places each vendor in a quadrant to show how they compare. The position is based on the following criteria:

  • Ability to execute: How well the vendor delivers today — product strength, customer experience, pricing, financial stability, and market presence.
  • Completeness of vision: How well the vendor is positioned for the future — strategy, innovation, and understanding of market needs across industries and regions.

See Why Atlan Is a Leader — Take the Product Tour →

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions: Essential functions and capabilities

Gartner states that metadata management solutions should act as “metadata anywhere” orchestration platforms – technology enablers that can operate anywhere and integrate with diverse tools in an enterprise’s modern data and AI stack.

They should make it easy to find, understand, manage, and use data by:

  1. Breaking down data silos
  2. Capturing context across various data types, sources, and use cases
  3. Fostering collaboration between applications and humans (and more recently, AI agents)

What are the essential capabilities of metadata management solutions, according to the latest Gartner MQ?


Key capabilities include:

  • Metadata discovery, curation, and analysis
  • Metadata search and sharing
  • Ontology and taxonomy management
  • Data lineage, profiling, and rules management
  • Metadata operational support
  • GenAI augmentation
  • Use of automation and AI for real-time alerts and recommendations

What are the primary use cases of AI-driven metadata orchestration platforms, according to Gartner?


The biggest use cases are:

  • Metadata ingestion and capture across systems, users, data sources, and AI apps
  • Data usability enablement
  • Data governance
  • AI readiness
  • Support for activating modern data management architectures

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions: Inclusion criteria

To qualify for inclusion, metadata management solution providers must meet several criteria, such as:

  • Provide standalone cloud-based/SaaS offerings that are purpose-built for broad metadata management use cases (data usability enablement, governance, AI readiness, etc.).
  • Deliver critical metadata management capabilities (listed above).
  • Support large-scale deployment for diverse users, applications, and systems.
  • Have at least 50 paying production customers for their flagship metadata management product.
  • Global presence, with direct or partner-provided sales and support operations in at least two regions– North America, South America, EMEA, or Asia/Pacific
  • Rank among the top 20 organizations in Gartner’s Customer Interest Indicator (CII) – a metric calculated using inputs from Gartner customer search and inquiry, competitor mentions on Gartner’s Peer Insights, social media presence, etc.

The biggest trend is the emergence of metadata orchestration platforms – solutions that make metadata available anywhere and integrate with modern data architecture and tools.

This shift is because of future-forward enterprises reimagining how they leverage data to ensure AI readiness and support AI-powered use cases.

“Traditionally treated as a static documentation exercise involving data catalogs and repositories, metadata management is rapidly shifting to an active, AI-augmented ecosystem — one that is essential for enterprise AI readiness, efficient data governance, and real-time decision making.“ - Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

Historically, most metadata isn’t completely captured or used to unlock its fullest business potential. Today, AI readiness demands the opposite: metadata must be continuously captured, analyzed, orchestrated, and applied in real time.

This turns metadata into a living asset that actively directs data operations, improves governance efficiency, and powers AI, analytics, and agent-based automation.


Other trends shaping the metadata management solutions landscape are:

  • Consolidation of use cases, with broader solutions combining metadata management with data quality, governance, and analytics.
  • The central role of active metadata management in powering an active, AI-augmented ecosystem.
  • The emergence of GenAI enablement and agentic AI support as a prominent use case for metadata management solutions.
  • A demand for openness to drive integration and interoperability across the modern data and AI stack.
  • Deeper ecosystem partnerships from CSPs for comprehensive metadata support – GCP with Atlan and Collibra, Microsoft with Informatica and Solidatus.
  • A slew of acquisitions is reshaping the space– ServiceNow acquiring data.world, Coalesce buying CastorDoc, and Salesforce’s yet-to-be-completed purchase of Informatica.

What this means for data leaders in 2026: No metadata? No AI.


  • Enterprise data leaders — Directors, Heads of Data Platforms, and CDOs — are now on the hook for making AI work reliably in production.
  • Their data investments must support fast-emerging needs like agentic workflows and Talk-to-Data interfaces, which are rapidly becoming top AI budget priorities.
  • With metadata now central to AI readiness, leaders must build an ecosystem that unifies, updates, and activates metadata so AI outputs stay accurate and trustworthy.

This Magic Quadrant report gives them expert guidance on the metadata management solutions best suited to orchestrate and activate metadata for their highest-value AI use cases.

Why is Atlan a leader in metadata management for the AI era?

Back in 2021, when Gartner paused the Metadata Management Magic Quadrant and folded it into data governance, Atlan was already investing in a future-proof, metadata-first foundation for modern data teams.

By 2025, as Gartner relaunched the MQ in response to metadata becoming essential for AI success, Atlan had already reshaped the category.

Atlan pioneered active metadata management with its metadata lakehouse, bidirectional sync, open architecture, and automation-first, AI-ready experience — years before the market caught up. So it’s no surprise that Atlan is recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions. Atlan delivers the exact modern metadata foundation Gartner highlights as critical today: open, active, and built for agility.

  1. Best for breadth of context to AI apps
  2. Most future-proof platform (with bidirectional metadata sync)
  3. Most non-technical user adoption
  4. Fastest time to value

Best for breadth of context to AI apps


  • Atlan’s Metadata Lakehouse unifies technical, business, and operational metadata, connecting structured and unstructured sources into a single active metadata context and collaboration layer.
  • Atlan’s MCP server provides your AI with metadata intelligence, enriching AI agents with real-time metadata context. This powers intelligent asset discovery, lineage exploration, and governance actions through natural conversation.

“Atlan’s metadata lakehouse architecture brings together technical, business, and operational metadata in a unified, active metadata layer…which is purpose-built for AI.” - Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

Most future-proof platform with bidirectional metadata sync


  • Atlan’s open APIs and app framework keep development extensible, without vendor lock-in.
  • Moreover, with bidirectional metadata sync, Atlan delivers context-aware metadata insights integrated directly into everyday tools and applications.

“Atlan continues to innovate with AI-driven metadata enrichment, lineage automation, and an expanding partner ecosystem.” - Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

Most non-technical user adoption


  • Atlan’s personalized, Netflix-like user experience drives broad adoption beyond technical teams – 90%+ adoption across personas in the first 90 days.
  • Atlan embeds where work happens (Slack, Teams, BI tools, Jira, ServiceNow), integrating metadata management collaboratively across the organization.

“Customers highlight Atlan’s speed of deployment, intuitive user experience, and open integration model as differentiators.” - Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

Fastest time to value


  • Automation-first metadata management, DIY connectors, and an advisory-led onboarding accelerate deployment and deliver measurable business outcomes.

“Atlan’s solution focuses on automation, allowing every action to be performed programmatically via APIs and calling via an LLM.” - Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions 2025: What’s in store for 2026?

The 2025 Gartner MQ highlights metadata as the foundation for organizing, contextualizing, and governing enterprise data. As AI adoption accelerates and data volumes surge, organizations are increasingly relying on metadata management platforms to make their data AI-ready and trustworthy at scale.

The real advantage now lies with platforms that deliver metadata context seamlessly across people, systems, and AI agents, creating a unified layer of trust and collaboration across the data lifecycle. Use this report to understand where the market is heading, which capabilities matter most, and how to evaluate solutions that will support your enterprise for the long term.

Book a Demo with Atlan — a Recognized Leader →

FAQs about Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions 2025

1. What is the Gartner Magic QuadrantTM for metadata management solutions 2025?


The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions 2025 is an independent research-based evaluation of vendors that provide tools and platforms for managing, governing, and activating metadata across enterprise systems.

The report assesses each vendor based on completeness of vision and ability to execute, positioning them as Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, or Niche Players.

The 2025 edition reflects the market’s evolution toward active, AI-ready metadata orchestration and support for agentic AI.

2. What are the key evaluation criteria used by the Gartner Magic QuadrantTM for metadata management solutions 2025?


Gartner evaluates metadata management solution vendors on:

  • Breadth of metadata management capabilities and use cases
  • Automation (lineage, classification, quality, enrichment)
  • Integration and interoperability
  • Scalability, extensibility, and ecosystem reach
  • Support for emerging AI and agentic AI use cases
  • Global presence, customer footprint, and Gartner CII scores

The 2025 report identifies the following major trends shaping the market:

  1. Metadata orchestration
  2. Active metadata
  3. Integration with modern data architectures
  4. Gen AI augmentation and agentic AI support

4. How can you choose the right metadata management solution in 2025 using Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for metadata management solutions report?


The Magic Quadrant serves as a benchmark to match organizational priorities with vendor strengths and execution maturity.

Enterprises should evaluate vendors based on alignment with their metadata management maturity and AI goals:

  • Identify whether your organization needs
  • Assess vendor support for open APIs, extensibility, and integration with your existing data stack.
  • Prioritize platforms that enable self-service adoption across technical and business users.
  • Consider implementation timelines and proven customer outcomes as key differentiators.

5. Why is Atlan listed as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions 2025 report?


Atlan is recognized as a Leader for its ability to unify metadata across the enterprise and activate it for both human and AI workflows.

Its active metadata architecture supports rapid onboarding, AI governance, and real-time collaboration across distributed data teams.

Atlan’s open APIs, fast time-to-value, and enterprise-wide adoption model position it strongly on both Gartner’s Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision axes.

This reflects Atlan’s strategic focus on metadata as the context fabric connecting data, governance, and AI across the modern enterprise.

6. How should I interpret the MQ if I already use a technical catalog (Snowflake Horizon, Purview, Databricks Unity)?


The MQ helps you identify platforms that:

  • Act as a “catalog of catalogs”

  • Provide enterprise-wide lineage and context

  • Add business semantics

  • Deliver automation beyond what first-party tools offer

    Metadata consolidation is crucial as estates become more multi-cloud and AI-driven.

7. What reports should enterprise data leaders consider before investing in tools for their data ecosystem?


Enterprise data leaders should evaluate a mix of Gartner Magic Quadrants, Market Guides, Waves, and Hype Cycles to understand market direction, vendor maturity, and long-term fit.

The most relevant reports include:

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Atlan named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Metadata Management Solutions 2025. Read Report →

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