Best Free Plans for Self-Service BI Tools
Many companies have a ton of transactional and business data sitting in databases nobody can access. Self-service Business Intelligence tools try to solve this. They allow you to run queries on this data and to visualize it in reports and dashboards.
The tools listed here are an alternative to Tableau.
Popular self-hosted alternative: Metabase
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Trevor is one of the newer tools in this space. It offers a very nice user experience. Queries can be put together with the no-code builder or by writing SQL. Query results can be displayed as graphs on dashboards with global filters. There are email and Slack alerts as well scheduled exports to S3.
Free plan
3,000 Credits / Month (1-3 Credits per Query Run)
Unlimited Users
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Cluvio standout feature is data processing with the statistical computing language R. It does not have a query builder, so SQL knowledge is required. There are many visualization and filter options. Some nice features like SQL alerts, scheduled reports, CSV exports und viewer users are limited to the paid tiers.
Free plan
1,000 Queries / Month
1 User
3 Dashboards
1 Data Source
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Mode is a very extensive tool, which can be overhelming on first glance. Queries require SQL. Futher processing can be done in R and Python. Many visualization options. Custom HTML on the dashboards. Pitty: Dashboard filters are not available in the free tier.
Free plan
Unlimited Queries, Dashboards
3 Users
Max 10 MB/Query
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Google's offering is both, very powerful and very limiting, at the same time. It has great visualization option with tons of different charts and a lot of freedom. Global filters are availble. Sharing, schedules and even embedding is possible. However, because Looker Studio mostly avoids SQL, custom calculations, data joining etc. are more cumbersome than in other tools.
Free plan
Unlimited Queries, Dashboards
Unlimited Users (with Google Account)
Embedding & Email Schedules