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Databases · head to head

Canary Labs vs Immuta

Canary Labs logo

Canary Labs

Databases

Industrial process historian with published per-tag pricing and no client licence fees

From
$3000/year
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Immuta logo

Immuta

Databases

Attribute-based access control and masking applied inside Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Canary Labs pricing steps by tag band rather than actual tags, so a site sitting just above a threshold pays the next band in full; growth from 3,400 to 3,600 tags is a licence purchase, not a rounding error.; Immuta contracts commonly start around one hundred to two hundred thousand US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and exceed five hundred thousand at enterprise scale, which excludes most data teams without a regulatory mandate.
  • They diverge on capability: Canary Labs covers Loss-less compression, Immuta covers Attribute-based policy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Canary Labs and Immuta actually diverge.

Attributes where Canary Labs and Immuta differ
AttributeCanary LabsImmuta
Starting price$3000/yearOn request
Pricing modelPer tag band per yearquote
PlatformsWindows, WebWeb, API, Cloud

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Canary Labs

  • Loss-less compression
  • Unlimited clients
  • Store and forward
  • Views service
  • Sparkplug B
  • Calculation engine
  • Axiom
  • ODBC and REST

Only in Immuta

  • Attribute-based policy
  • Native enforcement
  • Dynamic masking
  • Row-level filtering
  • Purpose-based access
  • Sensitive data tagging
  • Audit logging
  • Multi-platform

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Canary Labs

  • A manufacturer that needs a compliant historian but cannot justify a PI System enterprise agreementnot Immuta
  • A water utility replacing SCADA-embedded logging with a historian that survives the next SCADA replacementnot Immuta
  • An Ignition site that wants long-term storage and trending without paying per-client for dashboardsnot Immuta
  • A plant with regulatory data-retention obligations where swinging-door compression would not survive an auditnot Immuta

Immuta

  • A bank whose Snowflake estate has grown to tens of thousands of roles that no one can review before an auditnot Canary Labs
  • A healthcare analytics team that must let researchers query patient data with identifiers masked unless a specific purpose is recordednot Canary Labs
  • A multinational applying different residency and access rules per jurisdiction to the same tables without duplicating datasetsnot Canary Labs
  • An organisation running both Snowflake and Databricks that wants one policy set rather than two divergent implementationsnot Canary Labs

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Canary Labs

  • Pricing steps by tag band rather than actual tags, so a site sitting just above a threshold pays the next band in full; growth from 3,400 to 3,600 tags is a licence purchase, not a rounding error.
  • CustomerCare at 18 percent of licence cost is effectively mandatory on perpetual licences because lapsing it removes upgrades, so the perpetual option is not really a one-time cost.
  • The storage format is proprietary; getting data out at volume means the ODBC connector, an additional 2,500 USD one-time or 1,000 USD a year, or writing against the REST API.
  • Canary is a small vendor with a limited partner network outside North America, so support coverage and integrator availability in Europe and Asia are thinner than for AVEVA or Ignition.
  • It is a Windows-only server product with no Linux or container deployment, which complicates placing collectors in modern edge estates.

Immuta

  • Contracts commonly start around one hundred to two hundred thousand US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and exceed five hundred thousand at enterprise scale, which excludes most data teams without a regulatory mandate.
  • Policy is only as good as the data classification underneath it, so an organisation with poorly tagged columns will spend months on classification before Immuta enforces anything useful.
  • Native enforcement means capability varies by platform, and a feature available on Snowflake may be absent or behave differently on BigQuery, which undermines the promise of one policy set everywhere.
  • Adding an access governance layer creates a new dependency in the path to data: a misconfigured policy silently returns fewer rows rather than erroring, and analysts can act on incomplete results without noticing.
  • It governs cloud data platforms, so personal data in operational databases, files and SaaS applications sits outside its scope and needs separate controls, meaning Immuta is rarely the whole answer.

Pricing, plan by plan

Canary Labs

$3000/year
  • Subscription, 3,500 tags$3000/year
    • Unlimited Axiom clients
    • Unlimited Excel clients
    • Support and upgrades included
  • Perpetual, 3,500 tags$8730/one-time
    • 7,400 USD licence plus 1,330 USD first-year CustomerCare
    • CustomerCare renews at 18 percent of licence cost per year
    • Unlimited clients
  • Private cloud, 3,500 tags$12320/year
    • Hosted by Canary
    • 1,500 USD one-time setup fee per system
    • Scales to around 58,684 USD per year at 60,000 tags
  • Enterprise unlimited$undefined/year
    • Unlimited tags
    • Negotiated licensing terms
    • Quoted pricing

Immuta

On request
  • Immuta Platform$undefined/year
    • Attribute-based policy authoring
    • Native enforcement in supported data platforms
    • Dynamic masking and row-level security

Which should you pick?

Choose Canary Labs if

  • You need loss-less compression.
  • You work on Windows, Web.
  • You also want unlimited clients.
Canary Labs review

Choose Immuta if

  • You need attribute-based policy.
  • You work on Web, API, Cloud.
  • You also want native enforcement.
Immuta review

Questions people ask

Is Canary Labs or Immuta better?
Neither clearly leads. Canary Labs starts at $3000/year and Immuta at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Canary Labs or Immuta?
Canary Labs starts at $3000/year and Immuta at On request.
Does Canary Labs or Immuta run on more platforms?
Canary Labs runs on Windows, Web. Immuta runs on Web, API, Cloud.
What is Canary Labs best used for?
Canary Labs is most often used for a manufacturer that needs a compliant historian but cannot justify a pi system enterprise agreement, a water utility replacing scada-embedded logging with a historian that survives the next scada replacement, an ignition site that wants long-term storage and trending without paying per-client for dashboards, a plant with regulatory data-retention obligations where swinging-door compression would not survive an audit. Of those, a manufacturer that needs a compliant historian but cannot justify a pi system enterprise agreement and a water utility replacing scada-embedded logging with a historian that survives the next scada replacement are not what Immuta is typically brought in for.
What can Canary Labs do that Immuta cannot?
Canary Labs covers Loss-less compression, Unlimited clients, Store and forward, Views service. Immuta covers Attribute-based policy, Native enforcement, Dynamic masking, Row-level filtering.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Canary Labs: What does Canary cost?

8,730 USD for a 3,500 tag perpetual system including first-year CustomerCare, or 3,000 USD a year on subscription.

Immuta: Does Immuta sit in the query path?

No. It compiles policies into the data platform's own native controls, so queries run at normal speed through your existing tools.

Canary Labs: Are client licences extra?

No. Unlimited Axiom browser clients and unlimited Excel clients are included on every tier.

Immuta: What does it cost?

Not published. Market data suggests roughly 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and considerably more at enterprise scale.

Canary Labs: Is perpetual cheaper than subscription?

Canary states perpetual pays off after roughly three years, and after that you still pay 18 percent CustomerCare annually.

Immuta: Is Immuta still independent?

Yes. It remains independently owned, unlike several competitors in data access governance that have been acquired.

Canary Labs: Does it use lossy compression?

No. Canary stores every collected value rather than approximating the trend, which matters for regulated data retention.

Immuta: Does it work across more than one warehouse?

Yes, one policy set can target Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery and Starburst, though enforcement capability varies by platform.

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