BI Tools Comparison Matrix: A Holistic Collection (2024)
In this blog, we share the BI comparison matrix and an RFP template to help you compare BI tools more easily.
Introduction
Choosing the right BI tool is hard. With so many features, capabilities, and criteria to consider, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in options.
To save you from that fate, the folks at Datateer and the Chartio community crowd-sourced a BI tool comparison matrix for everyone’s sanity. Big thanks to Adam Roderick for generously sharing it with the dbt community.
It’s important to note that this BI tools evaluation matrix was created 02 years ago - even though the Holistics team has been updating it, this BI matrix might be 100% up-to-date with the current state of the mentioned BI tools.
That being said, it’s still a good starting point when there are too many BI tools on the market.
How To Use BI Tools Comparison Matrix
This Comparison Matrix aims to give you a framework to evaluate BI tools. Different companies have different analytics setups, use cases, and data literacy levels - so you should make a copy and make it your own.
Feel free to leave suggestions in this sheet so that we can continue to update it.
Comparing The Best BI Tools: A Template
Over the years, we've received over 100 RFPs (Requests for Proposal) from a wide range of prospects and customers, from small businesses to international Fortune 500 companies. This has given us valuable insight into how data teams evaluate BI tools, the key questions they ask, and the capabilities they prioritize.
We've compiled all these RFPs into a single template to provide you with a clear framework for comparing different BI tools. ⬇️
Since everyone's criteria are different, we recommend cloning this template and customizing it to fit your specific needs before sending it to the vendor you’re evaluating. We've included an example from Holistics BI to help guide you. Check it out.
Summary Of BI Tools Mentioned In The Matrix
Here is the complete list of BI tools mentioned in this matrix - from Left To Right.
01. Astrato
Positioned as the alternative to Looker and Tableau for modern data teams, Astrato is an analytics and visualization layer on top of Snowflakes’ cloud. Each time you interact with and filter your visualizations, the Astrato data engine generates a SQL query and visualizes results instantly across all your data.
Pricing: User-based pricing. Starts at $8/user/month.
02. Actiondesk
Actiondesk is a spreadsheet interface that connects to your SaaS and databases you already use so that you can build dashboards and generate reports without having to manually import data.
Pricing: Start at $550/month. The all-feature plan starts at $1,000/month.
03. Holistics
Holistics is a self-service BI platform. With Holistics, analysts build and maintain analytics logic in Holistics semantic modeling layer. Non-technical users analyze and build their own charts without writing SQL. All are made governable and maintainable with Git version control.
Holistics comes with strong self-service functionalities - including native time period comparison, drill everywhere, embedded analytics, shareable links and custom data alerts. It also incorporated DevOps best practices into analytics with its own modeling and query language, dbt integration and Git Version control.
Pricing: Starts at $800/month. All-feature plan with unlimited reports is $1000/month.
04. Preset
Powered by open-source Apache Superset, Preset is a lightweight data visualization and exploration platform. Users can explore data with no-code viz builder or run a deeper analysis with SQL editor.
Pricing: Free plan available. Pro plan is $20/month
05. BI. PEYE
BI. P. Eye is an embedded BI tool - built for bubble.io users/ real estate + MLS stakeholders or any company with embedded analytics use cases.
Pricing: Not Available.
06. Bipp Analytics
Bipp is a modern BI tool that comes with a data modeling layer to centralize business logic and a visualization layer for everyone to explore data.
Pricing: User-based pricing. Starts at $15/explorer/month.
07. Infor Birst
Birst is an enterprise-graded analytics platform with AI-based data visualization and data modeling tool.
Pricing: Not available
08. Canvas App
Canvas is a data exploration tool that allows teams to build dashboards without a fully-managed data stack. Canvas connects to Stripe, Quickbooks, Segment, Hubspot, and >150 other apps and lets you build dashboards and answer questions without having to set up and maintain a data warehouse.
Pricing: Starts at $200/month.
09. Looker
Looker is an innovative BI with a unique approach to business intelligence. Looker has its own proprietary modeling language called LookML, it also provides a data modeling layer that is both reusable and maintainable and a wide range of visualization options. Looker also offers various data tools that can help you get the most out of your analysis including ML models that can be deployed in your dataset. For instance, There are BigQuery ML models available within the Looker Marketplace including classification, regression, and time series forecasting models.
Despite its wealth of functionality and features, Looker might put off mid-sized companies due to its hefty price point so here are a few similar BI tools in case you're looking for a more affordable Looker alternative.
Pricing: Starts at $35,000/year. (~$2900/month). Learn more about Looker Pricing.
Related reading: Top 05 Affordable Looker Alternatives for Mid-sized Companies
10. Cumul
Cumul is an embedded analytics platform that lets non-technical users build interactive dashboards with a drag-n-drop report builder.
Pricing: Start at $995/month.
11. Dash
Dash is a framework for building analytics applications with Python. It’s free and open-source.
12. Explo
Explo is an embedded analytics solution. It comes with embedded dashboards, shareable links and white-label portals for customer-facing analytics needs.
Pricing: Starts at $1,995+/month
13. Domo
Domo Business Cloud is a low-code data platform that combines self-service analytics, data sharing & embedded analytics, interactive reporting, and data app in one place.
Pricing: N/A.
14. Good Data
GoodData is a BI and data analytics platform built to create real-time dashboards and no-code/low-code analytics applications with open APIs. It offers self-service reporting, a semantic layer, declarative metadata, React and Python SDK for fast development.
Pricing: Start at $12,000/year
15. Helica Insights
Helica Insights is one of the best open-source BI tools, offering standard BI functionalities like embedding, self-service reporting, canned reports or data delivery via email.
Pricing: Free
16. Izenda
Izenda was acquired by InsightSoftware, and rebranded as Logi Analytics. It provides an embedded analytics solution - geared towards enterprises.
Pricing: Not available
17. Metabase
Metabase is an open-source SQL BI tool. It’s easy to use but limited in self-service functionalities. One of its notable features is Question Feature - it lets you answer your ad-hoc data questions. In “Simple question” mode, you can filter, summarize and visualize data. If you have a more complex question, you may choose “Custom questions” which gives you a powerful notebook-style editor to create more complex questions that require joins, multiple stages of filtering and aggregating, or custom columns.
Pricing: Free for self-hosted plan. Metabase cloud plan starts at $85/month.
18. Mode
Mode is a collaborative data platform that combines SQL, R, Python and visual analytics in one place. Users can also set schedules to share updated reports through emails and slack. Other features include collaborative data editing, interactive charts, white-label embeds and more.
Pricing: Around $2000/month.
19. Observable HQ
Observable is a collaborative data platform created for data scientists and developers. It offered a shared for users to work together and create complex graphs, charts, and other visual representations of data.
Pricing: User-based pricing. Starts at $12/month
20. Pan Intelligence
Pan Intelligence is an low-code embedded analytics solution for SaaS - it offers white-label embedded reporting and predictive analytics.
Pricing: Request Demo needed
21. PowerBI
Power BI is - without a doubt - a well-known Business Intelligence platform in the industry with a strong modeling capability and a rich set of visualization. It is also the first choice for every company that has adopted the Microsoft eco-system.
Pricing: For personal use, Power BI can be downloaded on your local machine for free. However, if you want to use more Power BI services, you will need to pay $9.99/user/month for a cloud solution or $4,995/month for a dedicated server (cloud compute and storage resource)
22. Amazon Quicksight
Amazon Quicksight is a lightweight BI platform for as-needed use. It’s designed for simplicity, and convenience of use - hence it might lack some standard BI functionalities.
Pricing: Pay-as-you-go pricing. Starts at $24/user/month.
23. Redash
Redash is a popular open-source SQL-based BI tool that can be installed easily on your local environment to get a simple SQL-to-chart functionality going. Yet as your analytics needs grow, you might face some pain points when using Redash like a lack of support for multiple data sources, or limited visualization options.
Pricing: Free
24. SeekTable
Seektable is a lightweight BI tool for ad-hoc & operational reporting with web-based pivot tables, charts, and usual tabular reports.
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plan starts at $25/user/month.
25. Selfr
Selfr is a low-code all-in-one data platform that provides all the tools you need to go from your live data sources to interactive dashboards. It is positioned as a replacement for a cloud data warehouse, an ELT solution, a data transformation solution, a scheduler, and a BI solution.
Pricing: Start at $300/month. The full-functional plan is $700/month.
26. Sigma Computing
Sigma is a cloud analytic platform that uses a familiar spreadsheet interface to give business users access to explore and get insights from their cloud data warehouse. Its Tableau/Excel-like UI makes it easier for non-SQL users to build reports and present data.
Pricing: N/A.
27. Sisense
Sisense is an enterprise-grade analytics platform. It takes pride in going beyond traditional business intelligence to provide organizations with the ability to infuse analytics everywhere, embedded in both customer and employee applications and workflows.
Pricing: N/A.
28. Tableau
One of the most popular BI tools, Tableau's strong visualization capabilities make it stand out among other visual BI tools. If your company is looking for a BI product with fancy charts to present to your management or your board of directors, Tableau will always be the first choice.
However, Tableau has a few big limitations - namely a lack of data modeling and data dictionary capabilities for Data Analysts - making it hard to manage metrics definitions centrally, or a lack of version control and collaboration when building data logic and dashboard.
Pricing: User-based pricing. Creator, who builds the data flow and visualization in Tableau Desktop, is charged $70/user/month. Explorer and Viewer are relatively cheaper at $35 and $12 per user per month respectively for on-premise deployment.
Related reading: Tableau vs Looker: What Data Community Said About These Most Popular BI Tools
29. Toucan Toco
Positioning as a guided BI solution, Toucan Toco focuses on reducing the complexity of bringing insights from data to business users. By having narrative reports, contextual glossaries, an interactive report builder, and easy-to-use data delivery functionalities, Toucan Toco aims to make analytics more accessible for non-technical users.
Pricing: Not Available.
30. Trevor. io
Trevor is a low-code BI tool. It aims to empower non-technical business users to to build reports, perform look ups, and get ad hoc answers on the fly using a simple yet intuitive query builder (or SQL).
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plan starts at $75/month.
For more Business Intelligence recommendation, check out:
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