Open data platforms · Open Knowledge Foundation / CKAN Association
CKAN
Open-source data management system powering government and organizational open-data portals worldwide.
CKAN is the software running behind many national and municipal open-data portals, including large deployments like data.gov.uk and the European Data Portal, as well as Data.gov's underlying catalog infrastructure in the US. It provides dataset cataloging with rich, customizable metadata schemas, a built-in API for harvesting from and publishing to other catalogs, and faceted search with in-browser previews for common formats. Extensions add capabilities like DataStore, which turns tabular files into a queryable API automatically, and DataPusher, which imports data into it. Being self-hosted open-source software rather than a SaaS product, an organization is responsible for its own hosting, upgrades and customization, which is the trade-off against commercial hosted alternatives like Socrata or Opendatasoft.
At a glance
| Vendor | Open Knowledge Foundation / CKAN Association |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Open source + paid options |
| Free tier | Yes |
| Deployment | Self-hosted |
| Open source | Yes (AGPL-3.0) |
| Best for | Governments and organizations that want full control over a self-hosted open-data portal. |
Pricing
Free and open source; hosting and support are the organization's own responsibility unless purchased from a third-party integrator.
Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.
Features
- Dataset cataloging with customizable metadata schemas
- Built-in harvesting and publishing API
- Faceted search with in-browser data previews
- DataStore extension for automatic tabular query APIs
- User and organization access control
- Powers major national and municipal open-data portals
Integrations
Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026