However, Starburst rivals, such as Databricks and Snowflake, offer agent governance features with Unity Catalog and Horizon, respectively.
Analysts point out that the agent usage tracking features added to Startburst are not only important for controlling over-expenditure but are also becoming table stakes across data lakehouses.
While Databricks’ Mosaic AI Gateway offers rate limits, usage tracking, and inference logs and tables, with cost monitoring through system tables, Snowflake’s Cortex AI Observability offers tracing, evaluations, and cost and usage analysis, along with community-built cost dashboards.
