About Collibra Units (CUs)

Collibra Units (CUs) are credits that measure how your organization uses specific Collibra capabilities. These units account for the computation and storage costs of services, such as Collibra AI Copilot, AI-generated descriptions, and other features.

How Collibra Units work

  • Base allowance: A Collibra package includes a predefined CU balance for each contract year. This allowance is shared across all environments tied to the contract.
    For more information on the allowance, go to the Collibra Units on the Collibra website.
  • Consumption: Using CU-connected features automatically deducts units from the CU balance. Features consume CUs at different rates based on their compute power and storage requirements.
  • Usage tracking and limits: Administrators control which CU-connected features are enabled and can monitor consumption using the Collibra Units Consumption dashboard. Automated guardrails indicate when an organization nears any CU allowance. If an allowance is reached, CU-connected features slow down or temporarily pause for all users. Users receive a banner in the CU-connected features at 80%, 100%, and 120% of the purchased CU allowance.
    For information, go to CU consumption guardrails and Tracking CU consumption.
  • Add-on purchases: If additional capacity is needed, extra CU bundles can be purchased. These add-on purchases are applied at the contract level and upgrade the shared allowance for all environments tied to that contract. Contact the Collibra Account Team about add-on purchases.
  • Annual expiration: The CU balance resets annually at the start of a new contract year. Unused CUs expire at the end of each contract year and can't be transferred to the next year.
Important 

This applies to Cloud environments only. It doesn't impact Collibra Platform for Government or Collibra Platform Self-Hosted (CPSH) environments.

CU-connected features

Collibra Units (CUs) currently power most Collibra AI features. As Collibra evolves, this consumption model will expand to include new advanced capabilities and premium features. The following features currently consume CUs when enabled and used:

Tip CUs are consumed only by features that have reached the Public Preview and General Availability (GA) release stage. Features in Private Preview don't consume CUs, allowing organizations to test and evaluate upcoming capabilities without impacting the CU balance.

CU consumption calculation

CU-connected features consume units based on transactions and storage:

  • Transactions: CUs are consumed when specific, one-time actions are executed by a user. For example, asking Collibra AI Copilot a question.
  • Storage: CUs are consumed to maintain data context, ensuring features and advanced capabilities respond instantly. For example, putting data in scope of Collibra AI Copilot.

Because of these factors, different features consume different amounts of CUs.

Note 

Collibra MCP is free to use, but some tools may use Collibra Units.

CU consumption guardrails

To help manage the capacity and avoid unexpected costs, Collibra enforces automated safety guardrails at specific consumption thresholds. These thresholds are visible as banners:

  • For admins: In the Units Allowance progress bar on the Collibra Units consumption dashboard.
  • For users: Directly in the feature. These banners are currently visible for the following CU-connected features:
    • AI-powered writing assistant agent
    • Asset Description Generation
    • Diagram Description Generation
    • Data Quality (Cloud) AI Rule Generation (SQL Assistant for Data Quality)
    • Data Quality (Cloud) AI driven rule suggestions
    • Semantic Mapping Agent
    • Semantic Model Generation

Both banner types appear at 80%, 100%, and 120% of the purchased CU allowance, with increasing restrictions at each level.

Banners in the consumption dashboard

80% CUs capacity: Warning

At 80% capacity, the Units Allowance progress bar reflects that 80% of the total CUs has been consumed. Feature performance isn't impacted, and users don't experience any changes.

This guardrail serves as an early warning for administrators to take action, if needed. You can dismiss the banner.

100% CUs capacity: Rate limit and performance impact

At the 100% guardrail, Collibra slows down CU consumption to manage usage. Users experience, for example, slower processing times when using CU-connected features.

The Units Allowance progress bar reflects 100% of the total allowance. You can't dismiss the banner.

120% CU limit: Paused capabilities

At 120% capacity, Collibra automatically pauses all CU-connected features to prevent further consumption. Users encounter system errors when attempting to use these features until additional CUs are purchased or the annual contract resets.

The Units Allowance progress bar reflects the 120% hard limit. You can't dismiss the banner.

Banners in Collibra features

80% CUs capacity: Warning

At 80% capacity, the banner shows that 80% of the total CUs has been consumed. Feature performance isn't impacted, and you don't experience any changes.

You can dismiss the banner.

100% CUs capacity: Rate limit and performance impact

At the 100% capacity, the banner shows that some functionality may not be available as the CUs usage limit has been reached. Collibra slows down CU consumption to manage usage. You experience, for example, slower processing times and delayed or failed requests when using the CU-connected features.

You can't dismiss the banner.

120% CU limit: Paused capabilities

At 120% capacity, the banner shows that the feature is not available as the CUs usage limit has been reached. Collibra automatically pauses all CU-connected features to prevent further consumption. You can't use the features until additional CUs are purchased or the annual contract resets.

You can't dismiss the banner.

Tracking CU consumption

As an administrator, you can track the CU consumption using the Collibra Units Consumption dashboard in the Collibra Units settings page. This pages allows you to:

  • Track total CU consumption.
  • Monitor CU consumption guardrail warnings.
  • Analyze the specific CU consumption of CU-connected features and environments.

View the Collibra Units Consumption dashboard

Prerequisites

You have a global role with the Product Rights > System administration global permission.

Steps

  1. On the main toolbar, click Products icon → Cogwheel icon Settings.
    The Settings page opens.
  2. Click Users and subscriptions.
    The Users tab opens.
  3. Click Collibra Units.
    The Collibra Units consumption dashboard opens.

About the Collibra Units Consumption dashboard

The Collibra Units Consumption dashboard includes various sections, giving you context and statistics about the CU usage.

Units Allowance

The Units Allowance section offers a summary view of CU consumption for the current contract period. The current contract period associated with your Collibra package is listed above the summary cards. All CU allowances are tied to this timeframe and reset at the end of this period. Unused units can't be carried forward.

Summary card Description
Annual allowance

The CUs included in your contract for each contract year.
If your organization has a multi-year contract, this card always reflects only the current contract year, not the full multi-year total. Unused CUs don't carry over to the next contract year.
Additional allowance

The total number of CUs acquired through add-on purchases during the current contract year. For example, if your organization reaches its Annual allowance in July and purchases an additional 50,000 CUs, that amount appears here.
Total allowance

The sum of the Annual allowance and Additional allowance. This represents the maximum number of CUs your organization can consume before reaching the 100% guardrail.
Consumed CUs to date

The number and percentage of CUs used by enabled CU-connected features during the current contract period, relative to the Total allowance. For example, 6,200 CUs (6.2%).

Filters

Use the filters to narrow the data the metrics below the filters display. These filters don't affect the summary cards.

  • Environment: Filter the dashboard to a specific environment, or view all environments included in your contract.
  • Date Range: Filter the dashboard to a specific time period.

Consumed CUs to date

The Consumed CUs to date section shows a progress bar of the total CUs consumed against the Total allowance for the current contract period.

  • This chart reflects consumption across the environments selected in the Environment filter. It isn't affected by the Date Range filter.
  • Hover over the progress bar to see a breakdown of consumed CUs per environment.

Consumption over time

The Consumption over time bar chart shows CU consumption per month, color-coded by environment.

  • Each color represents a specific environment, identified in the legend below the chart.
  • Click an environment in the legend to show or hide its consumption in the chart.

Consumption per feature

The Consumption per feature table breaks down CU consumption per CU-connected feature. This view allows you to audit specific capabilities, identify heavy usage trends, and calculate the return on investment (ROI) of individual features.

Column Description
Feature name

This column shows features grouped under a parent row, such as Collibra AI Copilot that have been enabled and used in your organization across the environments that are tied to the contract. It includes both transaction-based features and storage-based allocations. Click the arrow next to a parent row to expand it and see the individual features included in that group.
Consumed CUs (% share)

This column shows the CUs used during the selected date range as both a cumulative number and percentage. This metric highlights which features are driving the highest burn rate.

The percentage doesn't represent the percentage of your total contract allowance. For example, if this column shows 28.0% for Maestro, it means that over a quarter of all consumed CUs have gone toward powering that feature.

Consumption per user

The Consumption per user table shows how users in your Collibra environments use CUs.

  • First name and Last name lists the user who performed the CU-consuming actions.
  • Environment shows which environment this user exists and performed the CU-consuming actions in.
  • Consumed budget shows the number of CUs consumed by that user.

Related topics

Helpful resources

Collibra Units on the Collibra website