CKAN

What CKAN does

CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) is an open-source data management system (DMS) founded in 2006, designed to publish, catalog, discover, and share structured and unstructured data through web portals. The platform is built primarily in Python on Flask, SQLAlchemy, and Jinja2, with PostgreSQL as the database, Redis for caching and background jobs, and Solr for full-text search. It exposes a comprehensive RPC-style Action API and a DataStore API for tabular data, and supports a modular extension architecture covering geospatial data (WMS/WFS/GeoTIFF), DCAT/RDF metadata, harvesting, multilingual deployments, and custom schemas.

The business model is community-led open source: the core software is distributed free under the AGPL v3.0 license via GitHub and PyPI, and adoption spreads through community contributions, the monthly CKAN Monthly Live webinar series, and an active forum. Commercial revenue, to the extent any is generated, flows through co-stewards Datopian and Link Digital, which offer support, consulting, and managed services to organizations implementing CKAN. Assets are held in trust by the UK-based non-profit Open Knowledge Foundation, with the trademark protected for community use. The project has 2,000+ active instances worldwide serving national governments (Canada, US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Norway, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Finland), multilateral organizations (UN OCHA's HDX, UNHCR, WFP, FAO, UNAIDS, Gates Foundation), research institutions (Sigma2/NIRD Norway, Academia Sinica's depositar, CSIRO Data61), and enterprises in resources, energy, pharmaceuticals, and finance.

In 2023 CKAN was officially recognized as a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Good Alliance for its role in addressing 9 of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, and it is supported by the NSF POSE Phase II programme at the University of Pittsburgh for sustainability research. The latest major release, CKAN 2.12, introduces a new file storage backend and up to 15x DataStore performance improvements, on the roadmap toward CKAN 3.0. The project has 51-100 contributors/maintainers in its core ecosystem and is registered in Madrid, Spain.

Name

CKAN

Legal name

CKAN (The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network)

Website

https://ckan.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2006

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

CKAN is an open-source data management system founded in 2006 that powers data portals for national governments, UN agencies, research institutions, and enterprises, with 2,000+ active instances globally and assets held in trust by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Madrid

HQ country

Spain

HQ region

Europe

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Open Source Software (Free): CKAN software is freely available under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3.0. Users can download, install, and use CKAN at no cost.
2. Commercial Support Services: Datopian and Link Digital, the co-stewards of the CKAN project, offer commercial CKAN support and implementation services to organizations that need professional assistance with deployment, customization, and ongoing maintenance.
3. Managed Services and Consulting: CKAN's commercial ecosystem includes consultants and companies providing full-lifecycle CKAN-related services including implementation, customization, UI theming, data migration, and ongoing platform management.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels6 records

Marketing channels13 records

Core offering

CKAN is an open-source data management system (DMS) that powers data hubs and data portals, making it easy to publish, share, and use data. It provides metadata cataloguing, faceted full-text search, data preview, API-first integration, fine-grained access controls, and an extensible architecture for organisations ranging from national governments to enterprises and NGOs. The platform is freely available under the AGPL v3.0 license, with commercial support and managed services delivered through co-stewards Datopian and Link Digital.

Product overview

CKAN is an open-source data management system (DMS) for powering data hubs and data portals. The core product is the CKAN Core Platform, a Python-based open-source DMS that makes it easy to publish, share, and access data. The platform is extended through a rich ecosystem of community-maintained extensions including the DataStore Extension for tabular data storage and querying, FileStore Extension for file management, Table Designer Extension for custom schemas, DCAT Extension for EU compliance, Geospatial Extension for spatial data, Multilingual Extension for i18n, and the Scheming and Harvesting extensions for metadata standardization. CKAN exposes its functionality via the CKAN Action API, and supports deployment through cloud infrastructure. The product is offered free under AGPL v3 license with commercial support available from co-stewards Datopian and Link Digital.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• CKAN Core Platform The core open-source data management system (DMS) for powering data hubs and data portals; enables organisations to publish, share, catalogue, and use data with metadata management, faceted search, data preview, and access controls.
• CKAN Action API RPC-style API exposing all CKAN core features for external integration, including dataset, user, organisation, and group management; supports GET and POST requests with JSON responses, JSONP callbacks, API token authentication, and file uploads via multipart/form-data.
• DataStore Extension Extension enabling storage and querying of tabular data within CKAN; provides the DataStore API for programmatic SQL queries and analysis on uploaded datasets.
• FileStore Extension Extension for handling file uploads and storage within CKAN; manages file resources attached to datasets with local or cloud-based storage backend options.
• DataPusher Plus Third-generation data ingestion tool for CKAN that automates metadata handling and simplifies data stewardship by combining fast bulk loading with intelligent data type guessing for tabular data uploads.
• Table Designer Extension Extension for creating custom data schemas and auto-generated Excel templates; allows administrators to define column types and constraints for structured data management.
• Multilingual Extension Extension enabling multi-language support for CKAN portals, allowing data portals to serve users in multiple languages with Transifex-based community translation.
• DCAT Extension (ckanext-dcat) Extension enabling exposure and consumption of metadata using RDF documents serialised via the DCAT specification; supports DCAT-AP 2.1 and custom profiles for EU data regulations compliance.
• Scheming Extension Extension for configuring and sharing metadata schemas using YAML or JSON schema descriptions; enables custom dataset types and standardised metadata across organisations.
• Geospatial Extension Extension adding geospatial capabilities to CKAN including support for WMS, WFS, and GeoTIFF formats; enables map-based data preview and integration with PostGIS and GeoServer.
• CKAN Ecosystem Catalog A searchable directory of CKAN sites, extensions, and tools that increases visibility across the ecosystem and helps organisations discover CKAN implementations, extensions, and tools worldwide.

Quantifiable outcome

• 2,000+ active CKAN instances deployed globally across national governments, regional governments, and enterprise organisations
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers40 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability2 records

Feature9 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• DatopiancoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2021Datopian is a co-steward of the CKAN project and one of the longest-standing contributors. As co-steward, Datopian dedicates time and resources to developing CKAN further for everybody's benefit. Rufus Pollock, Datopian's founder, represents the organisation in CKAN governance. Datopian also provides commercial CKAN support and implementation services.
• Link DigitalcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2021Link Digital is a co-steward of the CKAN project and one of the longest-standing contributors. Steven De Costa represents Link Digital as co-steward. Link Digital provides commercial CKAN support, implementation services, and development contributions including extensions like the sheet music directory with AI metadata.
• Open Knowledge FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOpen Knowledge Foundation (OKF) holds CKAN assets in trust as a non-profit 'purpose trustee' to ensure the co-stewards remain true to the purpose and ethos of the CKAN project. OKF provides institutional backing and governance oversight, including hosting the community forum on Discourse.
• OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)flagshipTechnology or IntegrationOCHA uses CKAN to power the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), one of the most significant CKAN-powered platforms in production today. HDX serves 250+ organisations, hosts 20,000+ datasets, and aggregates data from 1,900+ sources worldwide. Nadine Levin from OCHA/HDX actively contributes to the CKAN community.
• NSF POSE Programme (University of Pittsburgh)flagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe NSF-funded Pathways to Enable Open Source Ecosystems (POSE) programme supports CKAN's sustainability through research, community engagement, and ecosystem development. Phase II of the POSE project is led by the University of Pittsburgh with community managers like Jamaica Jones and principal investigators like Bob Gradeck.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Collibra: Enterprise data intelligence and governance platform offering data cataloging, lineage, and stewardship. Comparable as a broader data governance solution competing for the same enterprise data publishing budgets.
• Microsoft Purview: Cloud-native unified data governance and catalog service from Microsoft, bundled into Azure enterprise contracts. Competes with CKAN's enterprise data publishing proposition by offering catalog capabilities as part of a hyperscaler stack.
• Alation: Leading enterprise data catalog and governance platform with strong AI-driven metadata features. Targets large enterprises with internal data governance needs — broader in scope than CKAN but increasingly encroaching on enterprise data publishing use cases.

Others

• Apache Atlas: Apache open-source metadata and governance framework commonly deployed with Hadoop/big data stacks. Thematically comparable as an open-source cataloging project but technically oriented toward big data governance rather than open data portal publishing.

Direct peers

• DataHub: Open-source metadata platform originally forked from LinkedIn's WhereHows, providing dataset discovery, lineage, and collaboration features. Most comparable open-source alternative to CKAN for organizations building internal or external data catalogs and portals.
• Socrata (Tyler Technologies): Commercial open data portal platform acquired by Tyler Technologies, widely used by US cities, states, and federal agencies. Closest commercial competitor to CKAN in the US government open data market.
• Magda: Open-source data catalog platform originally built by CSIRO's Data61 (a CKAN user/partner). Comparable open-source alternative focusing on federated data discovery across organizations.
• Junar: Cloud-based open data platform historically used by US cities and counties for civic open data portals. Competes directly with CKAN for municipal and regional government open data deployments.
• OpenDataSoft: Commercial SaaS platform for building open data portals, targeting cities, governments, and enterprises. Directly competes with CKAN in the public-facing open data portal space, with a more polished UX but closed-source delivery model.

Emerging players

• Atlan: Modern data catalog platform targeting cloud-native data teams with strong collaboration and AI features. Emerging competitor to traditional open-source catalogs by offering a more modern UX and modern data stack integrations.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/ckanproject
• GitHubgithub.com/ckan/ckan
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCVeS3fHRae7BzXVn8wMcQVw
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/80804045

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about CKAN