Alternative
BigID Competitors and a BigID Alternative for DSAR Fulfillment, Priced for the Requests You Actually Get
BigID is a data intelligence platform, and discovery is the product rather than a feature of it. Founded in 2016 in New York by Dimitri Sirota and Nimrod Vax, it launched with a $2.1M seed round just as the EU was finalizing the GDPR, has since raised more than $320M, and was valued at $1.25 billion, with a $61.4M Series D in February 2024 led by Riverwood Capital and Advent International. If your problem is that you genuinely do not know what sensitive data you hold across thousands of structured and unstructured sources, on-prem and cloud, BigID is one of the best answers on the market and this page is not going to talk you out of it.
The thing to understand before you buy it for privacy requests is the shape of the product and the shape of the bill. BigID is built as a discovery and classification core with capabilities layered on top as separate apps, and Data Rights Automation is one of those apps rather than the center of the platform. Reviewers on PeerSpot describe licensing as capacity-based rather than per user, sized to how much data you have, and note that applications including Subject Rights Management and Data Retention carry additional cost. Capterra lists BigID with no starting price and no free trial or free version, so every number comes out of a sales conversation. One managing director put the fit test plainly: with thousands of data sources to connect and manage you will find it valuable and even cheap, and if you are a small business it is probably not the right tool for you.
Obtainer is built for the other end of that sentence. A request arrives, and the hard part is finding every place that one person's data lives before the clock runs out. It intakes the request, uses AI-native discovery to surface where the data sits, compiles a single reviewable manifest with source badges, drafts a deadline-safe response, and tracks the GDPR one-month and CCPA 45-day clocks, with a human redaction-and-approval gate in front of anything that leaves. Self-serve from $34/mo, priced flat rather than by how many terabytes you own. Where BigID wins, and it wins clearly: classification at petabyte scale, unstructured data, on-prem estates, data security posture management, retention and AI governance, none of which Obtainer offers. The question is not which platform is stronger. It is whether the job in front of you is knowing your entire data estate, or answering six requests a month correctly and on time. Obtainer helps you comply; it is not legal advice, and you stay in control of what is disclosed.
Side by side
Obtainer vs BigID
| Capability | Obtainer | BigID |
|---|---|---|
| DSAR fulfillment focus | One app on a data intelligence platform | |
| Discovery and classification across petabytes | Core strength | |
| Unstructured and on-prem data at enterprise scale | Core strength | |
| Data security posture management and AI governance | ||
| Reviewable manifest with source badges | Varies | |
| Human redaction and approval gate | Varies | |
| Works without a platform rollout first | Discovery is deployed and tuned before request automation pays off | |
| Self-serve, no sales call | Sales-led, no free trial or free version listed | |
| Pricing model | Flat, from $34/mo | Capacity-based, sized to data volume and sources |
| Published pricing | From $34/mo | Not published; Capterra shows no starting price |
Comparison reflects general product positioning and is provided in good faith. Verify current capabilities with each vendor.
The landscape
BigID alternatives compared by how well you already know your own systems
The honest way to choose between BigID and its alternatives is not by feature list but by one question: do you already know where your data lives? If you can name your systems, answering a request is a search-and-assemble job. If you cannot, classification has to come first, and that is the problem BigID is priced for. Reported figures are aggregated buyer-reported procurement data, so read the buyer count next to every median.
| Your situation | What answering one request takes | Better fit | Reported annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to a few dozen SaaS tools and databases you can list from memory, a handful of requests a month | Search each known system for one person and assemble the answer before the 45-day clock runs out | Obtainer Starter, a focused fulfillment tool | $408 a year for 10 requests a month, published on pricing |
| Same systems, request volume climbing toward dozens a month | The same search, repeated often enough that the manual hours become the main cost | Obtainer Growth or Business | $1,188 a year for 50 requests a month, $2,988 for 250 |
| You need a full privacy program: consent, assessments, inventory, vendor risk | A workflow platform that routes the request and reaches systems through integrations | OneTrust and the other privacy suites | OneTrust median about $11,970, across 153 unique buyers |
| Hundreds of data stores, past acquisitions, file shares nobody has mapped | Discovery and classification across the estate before any request can be answered completely | BigID, or a data security platform such as Varonis | BigID median about $101,950 from 4 purchases by 2 buyers; Varonis about $88,044 from 5. See Varonis pricing |
| Petabyte-scale unstructured data, security posture management, AI governance | Classification is the product, and requests are one use of it | BigID, clearly | Quote only; review sites put a limited first deployment near $25,000 and large rollouts at $75,000 to $300,000 |
Four BigID purchases from two buyers is not a market price, so treat that median as a sign of the band, not a quote. If the first two rows describe you, a PII scanner built for requests and the DSAR automation workflow do the job without a platform rollout.
See it live
Find the data, draft the response, hit the deadline, self-serve
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scanned
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Helps you comply, not legal advice
Questions
Common questions about BigID and the alternatives
How much does BigID cost?
BigID does not publish list pricing, and Capterra shows no starting price and neither a free trial nor a free version, so every figure comes from a quote. Reviewers describe the model as capacity-based rather than per user, sized to how much data you hold and how many sources you connect, with applications such as Subject Rights Management and Data Retention carrying additional cost on top of the platform. Aggregated procurement data reports a median near $101,950 a year with tracked contracts running from $75,000 to $163,987, while independent review sites put a limited first deployment closer to $25,000 and large enterprise deployments between $75,000 and $300,000. Those are secondhand figures, so treat the quote you receive as the only real number, and see OneTrust vs BigID on pricing for why BigID's reported median lands so far above OneTrust's.
What is BigID used for?
Knowing what data you have. BigID scans structured and unstructured sources across cloud and on-prem systems, classifies what it finds, correlates records back to individual people, and builds an inventory you can act on. Privacy teams use that inventory for data mapping, records of processing and request fulfillment; security teams use it for posture management and finding sensitive data in places it should not be; governance teams use it for retention and AI oversight. The common thread is discovery at scale, which is a different problem from processing a request.
Does BigID handle DSARs?
Yes. Data Rights Automation is a BigID app that collects requests through a privacy portal, email and other channels, validates identity and residency, correlates personal data to the individual across connected systems, generates reports, routes fulfillment tasks, executes deletions and keeps an auditable record. It is a real capability and at enterprise scale it is a strong one. The practical caveat is that it sits on top of the discovery platform, so its value depends on that platform being deployed, connected and tuned first, and reviewers report it is licensed as an additional application.
What is the best BigID alternative?
It depends which half of BigID you are replacing. If you need enterprise data discovery, classification and security posture across a large estate, the closest comparables are Securiti, Varonis and the discovery tiers of the big privacy platforms, and you are shopping in the same price band. If you need a full privacy program with consent, assessments and inventory, look at OneTrust, DataGrail, Transcend, Osano, Ketch and TrustArc. If the actual job is receiving access and deletion requests and answering them correctly inside 45 days, a focused fulfillment tool fits better than a data intelligence platform. Obtainer does that one job, self-serve from $34/mo.
BigID vs OneTrust, which is better for DSARs?
They fail in different directions. BigID starts from the data and works toward the request, so it is stronger at finding personal information you did not know you held, especially in unstructured stores. OneTrust starts from the workflow and works toward the data, so it is stronger at intake, routing, consent and the surrounding privacy program, and leans on integrations to reach the systems. If your bottleneck is not knowing where data lives, BigID has the better foundation. If your bottleneck is process, OneTrust does. Both are sales-led enterprise buys, which is the reason smaller teams end up looking at neither.
BigID vs Varonis, which is better for DSARs?
Neither is built mainly for DSARs. BigID is a discovery and classification platform with a Data Rights Automation app, so it is stronger at correlating records to one person. Varonis is a data security platform licensed per user plus connectors, with a privacy search over files and Microsoft 365. Reported medians are about $101,950 for BigID (4 purchases) and $88,044 for Varonis (5). See our Varonis pricing breakdown, or a PII scanner built for requests if requests are the whole job.
Do I need data discovery software to answer a DSAR?
You need to find the data. Whether that requires a discovery platform depends on how many systems you have and how well you know them. A company running fifteen SaaS tools and a couple of databases can usually enumerate them from memory, and the work is querying each one for a person and assembling the answer. A company with hundreds of data stores, historical acquisitions and unstructured file shares genuinely cannot, and for them classification is the prerequisite. Buying a discovery platform to answer a handful of requests a month is solving the second problem when you have the first.
Other comparisons
See Obtainer run a request end to end
Obtainer finds where a person's data lives across your systems, drafts the deadline-safe response, and tracks the GDPR and CCPA clock, focused on DSAR fulfillment and self-serve. You review, redact, and approve what gets disclosed. Helps you comply; not legal advice. Decide for yourself.