An Alation Consumption Unit (ACU) is Alation’s single currency for measuring how customers use its AI-powered products. Instead of buying seats, per-table subscriptions or separate product tiers, a customer purchases a pool of ACUs, and every metered action across the in-scope products draws from that one shared pool.[1] Alation explains that earlier each product was priced independently, so a second product meant a new negotiation and unused capacity on one product could not be applied to another.[1] The ACU model applies only to Alation Cloud Service.[1] Catalog proof: ACU is bought as one pool instead of seats or per-product tiers.
Editions
The paid pool is sold in four packs: Starter (60,000 ACUs), Growth (120,000 ACUs), Scale (240,000 ACUs) and Enterprise (480,000 ACUs).[1] The documents give no prices for the packs. Catalog proof: ACU pack Starter; ACU pack Growth; ACU pack Scale; ACU pack Enterprise; Paid ACU packs come in four sizes.
Products drawing on the pool, as of the current Alation Cloud Service page, are Curation Automation, Data Quality, Data Product Marketplace, Agent Studio, Critical Data Manager and AI Governance.[1] Alation describes each as follows. Curation Automation is an AI-powered capability that applies rule-based curation to many data assets from a central hub.[2] Data Quality provides monitoring and checks on cloud instances using the New User Experience.[3] The Data Products App creates curated, reusable data products that are published to a Marketplace; it is disabled by default and priced through the Account Manager.[4] Agent Studio builds AI agents on catalog context.[5] Critical Data Manager defines and monitors critical data elements, is available on Alation Cloud Service only and is enabled by default for customers with an ACU allocation.[6] AI Governance governs AI agents and models and is not enabled by default.[7]
Metrics: the rate card
Only actions that deliver AI-generated value are metered; passive activities such as browsing, searching, reading and manual edits are always free.[1] Because an AI output consumes tokens, Alation meters those actions and charges in ACUs.[1] The current rate card is:[1]
| Product | Metered action | ACU rate |
|---|---|---|
| Curation Automation | Per AI field write | 0.05 |
| Data Quality | Per check run; per anomaly run | 0.075 |
| Data Product Marketplace | Per chat message; per export | 0.50 |
| Agent Studio | Per call or tool invocation | 0.25 |
| Critical Data Manager | Per active CDE or Data Consumption per day | 1.0 |
| Data Product Marketplace | Per listed data product | 1.0 |
| AI Governance | Per Governed AI Asset per day | 1.0 |
The classic page lists the same rates without the anomaly-run row and without AI Governance, and describes the Data Product Marketplace asset rate as per listed data product or Data Consumption per day.[8] Catalog proof: Passive activity is not metered.
Product-specific rules
Curation Automation. An AI action, for tenants that bought a curation pack, is an AI agent filling an AI-generated value for a single field in a single object in a rule. ACU tenants are charged per field write. Fields filled by fixed values and manual curation are not counted, only successfully updated AI-generated fields are deducted, and a rule that fails mid-run counts only completed updates.[2] On the AI actions model each tenant receives 100,000 free actions, after which Alation charges for each action; a rule needing more actions than are available cannot be executed but can be created, edited and previewed.[2] Catalog proof: Curation Automation gives 100,000 free AI actions per tenant; Manually curated fields do not count towards AI actions or ACUs.
Agent Studio. Each distinct LLM call or tool invocation an agent makes during a workflow costs 0.25 ACU. Alation notes that most requests make two to three tool calls, so a typical request costs about 0.5 to 0.75 ACU, and that a complex run costs more.[5] Catalog proof: Agent Studio is metered at 0.25 ACU per action.
Critical Data Manager. From July 1, 2026 it is metered at 1 ACU per Critical Object per day, where a Critical Object is a Critical Data Element or a Data Consumption; Physical Data Elements are excluded. Objects in Draft, In Review or Certified status count, while Candidate, Deleted and Deprecated objects do not, and ACUs are deducted daily regardless of query volume or check-run frequency. Tracking ten CDEs for a thirty-day month consumes 300 ACUs.[1] Enabling the feature carries no ACU cost, and the Application Registry and EUC Registry are not metered.[6][9] Catalog proof: Critical Data Manager is metered per critical object per day; Enabling Critical Data Manager carries no ACU cost.
AI Governance. Metered at 1 ACU per Governed AI Asset per day. A Governed AI Asset is an agent or model linked to at least one Use Case; linking the first Use Case starts metering and removing the last stops it, and ungoverned assets and ingestion of assets are not metered.[1][7] Catalog proof: AI Governance is metered per governed asset per day.
Data Product Marketplace. The Licenses page separately reports purchased, used and available Data Products and chat messages for the month, so a customer may carry both a counted entitlement and ACU metering for the same product depending on its contract date.[10][1] Catalog proof: Data Products App is disabled by default and priced through the Account Manager.
Pool, free pool and allocations
The ACU dashboard (Admin Settings, User Management, Consumption Dashboard) shows the total pool for the contract term, consumption to date, the free pool, the paid pool and the remaining balance. Alation checks free credits first and uses the paid pool once they are exhausted, and free ACUs are provisioned at account level, not per user.[1] A cloud customer that has bought none of the in-scope products receives 6,000 free ACUs immediately; historical use of free Curation Automation credits is deducted, so the balance can appear lower.[1] Data refreshes with the daily Alation Analytics ETL, not in real time.[1] Catalog proof: Free ACUs are used before the paid pool; Cloud customers without in-scope products receive 6,000 free ACUs.
Server Admins and Catalog Admins may split the pool across products. Allocations are entered in kACU (1 kACU is 1,000 ACUs), must add up to exactly the pool, and cannot be lower than the amount a product has already used in the term.[1] Allocating is optional: if no one saves an allocation, products draw from the shared pool without a per-product cap.[1] Reaching a product allocation is a hard stop for that product regardless of the remaining pool; users see an error, can still navigate and read existing configurations, and an admin must raise the allocation, which requires lowering another.[1] Because consumption data refreshes about daily, a product may briefly exceed its allocation, and Alation advises leaving a margin.[1] Catalog proof: Product allocations must add up to the pool; Reaching a product allocation is a hard stop.
Thresholds and exhaustion
Pool banners appear at 80 and 90 per cent (visible to Server Admins and Catalog Admins) and an exhaustion banner is shown to all users. Per-product warnings appear at 70, 80 and 90 per cent of an allocation.[1] The Curation Automation page describes banners at 70 per cent, 90 per cent, overage and exhaustion for ACU tenants.[2] When ACUs are exhausted, new metered actions are disabled, buttons are greyed with explanations, Data Quality blocks new monitors and check runs, and Critical Data Manager enters read-only mode; the upgrade prompt directs the customer to Alation sales.[8][6] If the entire pool is consumed, the customer contacts its Alation account team to increase it.[1] Catalog proof: Exhausted ACUs disable new metered actions only.
Renewals and conversion
Customers that bought Curation Automation, Data Quality, Agent Studio, Data Product Marketplace or Critical Data Manager before the ACU model keep their entitlements and pricing until renewal; at renewal those entitlements are converted to an ACU pack at a revenue-equivalent rate.[1] Usage resets at rollover, but allocations do not, so the split should be reviewed at the start of each term.[1] Catalog proof: Existing product entitlements convert to an ACU pack at renewal; ACU renewal conversion.
Virtualization and partitioning
The ACU documents contain no virtualization, CPU or instance counting; consumption is by action or by object per day. The documents do not describe sharing a pool across separate Orders or Affiliates.[1][11] Affiliate orders are separate agreements under the MSA.[11]
Cloud and BYOL
The ACU model and most of these products are Alation Cloud Service only. Critical Data Manager and the Data Products App state that explicitly, and the feature comparison shows AI-based features such as ALLIE AI Suggested Descriptions as unavailable on customer-managed instances.[6][4][12] Customers may opt out of AI features, and Alation states that it will not use Customer Data to train, evaluate or improve its AI features, except as permitted by its policy.[13] The ALLIE feature uses Amazon Bedrock according to the documentation.[14]
Programs
The programs are the free ACU pool, the Curation Automation free AI actions, the per-product allocation mechanism, and the renewal conversion. The Licenses page also reports a purchased count of suggested descriptions for ALLIE AI Suggested Descriptions, which is counted rather than metered.[10] Catalog proof: ALLIE AI Suggested Descriptions; ACU pool and product allocations.
Audit considerations
Consumption is visible to the customer on the dashboard and enforced by the software, so the main compliance control is technical: a product stops at its allocation. For true-up questions, the MSA’s usage review and list-price overage clause still applies to limits in an Order, and the documents do not say whether consumption beyond the pool can be billed after the fact.[11][1]
Out of scope
This article does not cover the user-seat licensing of the core catalog, Alation Agent software, or support terms. It does not reproduce negotiated pack prices, which are not published.