At a glance
| Metadata ingestion and connectors | Crawlers for S3, RDS, DynamoDB, JDBC databases, Snowflake, BigQuery; APIs and Glue jobs |
| Lineage | AWS documents a record of transformations and operations for lineage; no lineage graph UI described on the pages checked |
| Business glossary | Glossary terms and custom metadata fields (preview) |
| Stewardship and workflows | Not documented in the Data Catalog itself |
| Access policies | IAM and AWS Lake Formation fine-grained permissions |
| Classification | Not documented for the Data Catalog on the pages checked (Glue offers sensitive data detection in jobs) |
| Search and discovery | Console search; Glue Search API with semantic search (preview) |
| Deployment | Managed AWS service, per region |
| Licensing | Pay as you go; 1 million objects and 1 million requests free per month |
The Glue Data Catalog is the default technical catalog for S3 data lakes on AWS: the first million objects and requests each month are free, and every AWS analytics engine reads it. It is a metastore more than a business catalog, so teams that need stewardship workflows and broad non-AWS discovery usually add a business catalog on top.
Overview
The AWS Glue Data Catalog is a feature of AWS Glue, not a separate product. It is a central repository of databases and tables that records each data set's location, schema, partitions and properties. Crawlers can populate it automatically from Amazon S3, RDS, DynamoDB, JDBC databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, and some non-AWS sources such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery, or you can define tables manually or from Glue jobs.
Amazon Athena, Amazon EMR, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Glue ETL and SageMaker AI use it as their shared metadata layer, and AWS Lake Formation adds fine-grained permissions and auditing. For open table formats it offers an Iceberg REST endpoint, managed compaction for Iceberg tables, column statistics and Iceberg materialized views. A preview adds business context: glossary terms, custom metadata fields and semantic search through the Glue Search API.
Key features
- Central metastore of databases, tables and partitions shared by Athena, EMR, Redshift Spectrum and Glue
- Crawlers that infer schemas from S3, AWS databases, JDBC sources, Snowflake and BigQuery
- AWS Glue Iceberg REST endpoint and REST extension endpoint for Iceberg clients
- Managed compaction for Iceberg tables and column-level statistics
- Apache Iceberg materialized views refreshed automatically (Glue 5.1+, EMR 7.12.0+, Athena)
- Fine-grained access control through AWS Lake Formation and KMS encryption of metadata
- Business context and semantic search with glossary terms (preview)
Integrations and ecosystem
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free for most small and medium catalogs under the monthly free tier
- Shared by every major AWS analytics engine, so one schema serves many tools
- Open Iceberg REST endpoint for engines outside AWS
- Lake Formation adds fine-grained, auditable permissions
Cons
- AWS and region scoped; not a neutral catalog for other clouds
- Business features such as glossary and semantic search are only in preview
- Crawler, statistics and compaction runs add DPU-hour charges
Pricing
The Data Catalog is billed as part of AWS Glue. Each month the first 1 million metadata objects stored and the first 1 million metadata requests are free; above that, storage is USD 1.00 per 100,000 objects per month and requests about USD 1.00 per million (the per-request rate is shown through the pricing page example). Crawlers that populate the catalog are billed at USD 0.44 per DPU-hour, per second; column statistics generation and Iceberg table optimization (compaction) are also USD 0.44 per DPU-hour, per second with a 1-minute minimum. AWS notes that rates vary by region. Fine-grained permissions use AWS Lake Formation, and queries are billed by the engines that read the catalog (Athena, EMR, Redshift).
Pricing checked on the vendor's official page on 7 November 2026. Prices change; confirm before buying.
Who it is best for
Teams building S3 data lakes or Iceberg lakehouses on AWS who need one technical metastore for Athena, EMR, Redshift and Glue.
Typical use cases
- Registering S3 data as tables so Athena and Redshift Spectrum can query it with SQL
- Running Iceberg tables with managed compaction and an Iceberg REST endpoint
- Governing lake access with Lake Formation permissions on catalog tables
- Keeping one schema for Glue ETL, EMR Spark and Athena
Who should look elsewhere
- Organisations that want a business-facing catalog with stewardship workflows across several clouds, where Collibra or Atlan fits better.
Verdict
For data on AWS, the Glue Data Catalog is close to unavoidable and usually inexpensive: it is the metastore the AWS engines share and it now speaks Iceberg REST. Treat it as the technical layer; if you need glossary, stewardship and discovery for business users across platforms, plan a business catalog alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the AWS Glue Data Catalog free?
Up to a point. The first 1 million metadata objects stored and 1 million requests each month are free. Beyond that it costs USD 1.00 per 100,000 objects per month and about USD 1.00 per million requests, and crawlers cost USD 0.44 per DPU-hour.
Is the Glue Data Catalog a separate product from AWS Glue?
No. It is a component of AWS Glue and is billed on the AWS Glue pricing page, but you can use it without running Glue ETL jobs, for example as the catalog for Athena or EMR.
Can non-AWS engines use the Glue Data Catalog?
Yes, through the AWS Glue Iceberg REST endpoint, which Iceberg-compatible engines can use. Snowflake, for example, documents AWS Glue as a supported external catalog for Iceberg tables.
Sources
- AWS Glue pricing
- Data discovery and cataloging in AWS Glue
- Accessing the Data Catalog
- AWS Glue Iceberg REST endpoint
- What is AWS Glue
Checked November 2026.
Listed in: Data Catalog & Governance.
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