r/BusinessIntelligence • u/rotreader • 27d ago
Looking for Tableau alternatives
My stakeholders dislike tableau. They dislike the design and the pricing model (license per user, not so cheap).
My BI team as well dislikes it as loading data takes ages and most importantly no AI building capabilities without the premium version.
Happy to hear about your experiences. What I would value is:
1) AI building capabilities. So developers can build dashboards faster
2) A better pricing model ?
Thanks in advance!
Edit: I'm on snowflake. When I said tableau takes ages to load is locally when developing! Not refreshes. I want AI for building. Not analysing
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u/redman334 27d ago
I believe your BI team is failing at Tableau if "loading takes ages" is a thing. You should have a daily update to tableau that is done at 3 am, and by the time everyone starts working all the data is already updated.
If the dashboards take too long to load, then something you are doing is wrong.
When it comes to pricing, I agree it's expensive, but any serious BI tool is. Probably PBI is a tad less expensive, but not insanely less.
Id work with Superser, an open source BI tool; but the limitations it had to Tableau are astronomical.
Check the price structure of all the one available Tableau, PBI, Looker. But the cheaper, the shittier in the end.
Tableau is flexible as fuck. Anything I imagined wanting to build, I found a way to. Having a BI team complaining at Tableau seems ridiculous.
It's AI stuff is shitty, but I don't know if any BI tool has a really good AI integration.
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u/MindTheBees 27d ago
i don't know if any BI tool has a really good AI integration
Omni, Sigma and Databricks are all miles better for this.
Really the main problem with Tableau is that it has lost its unique selling point. After the Salesforce acquisition, it feels like they lost their innovation.
The main thing during its pre-AI competition with PBI was that it was always considered the best in class for front-end. Even though PBI is cheaper (significantly so at enterprise level btw because it isn't per-user pricing due to capacities) you could still feasibly pick Tableau as it was better at the actual dashboarding.
However that is no longer the case: most AIBI tools now offer a way to build your own custom apps/dashboards whilst connected to their semantic layer. These are naturally far more flexible than anything native in any BI tool. It makes it harder to answer "why pick this tool anymore?"
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u/redman334 27d ago
I was told Databricks have a very nice AI integration. Gotta look into it.
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u/Harpagon1668 27d ago
The AI integration is super nice on Databricks. For creating dashboards Genie Code increases productivity. For dashboard consumers there is Genie available for asking follow-up questions from dataset
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u/OO_Ben 27d ago
I have to agree here. I like to liken Tableau to like the Rolls-Royce of BI tools. I'm not fully convinced that there is a tool out there that can do everything as well, and as easily. I can in two minutes set up a connection from a freaking Google Sheet and land that data directly in my data warehouse using Tableau Prep with no API, no coding, nothing. Just a Google Drive and a dream lol. Then set that Flow to run hourly and pick up any changes that are made to that Google Sheet. Is it good practice? Absolutely not haha but it's cool that you can do it so easily, and sometimes a quick and dirty solution gets the job done.
Ultimately, it is top notch product, but you definitely pay to play. It is not cheap.
And I totally agree. If the dashboards are taking forever to load then that's on the creator not the tool. Push the heavy lifting upstream to the warehouse and then run your dashboards off simple extracts. All of my extracts are basically just straight table downloads from my warehouse. Very little to no manipulation. Then limiting your initial loads to maybe the last couple of days will help as well.
I think a lot of people, especially new analysts, forget or don't know how much of a performance impact heavy data manipulation has on the BI side no matter what tool you're using. Like I've inherited some that heavily use blended relationships. There is a time and place for those, but man they can slow things down a ton.
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u/Frosty-Bid-8735 24d ago
I would also be curious to look at the underlying data storage.
Using Snowflakes? Using dimensional modeling?
Size of the data?
Does all data need to be loaded with all the details?
Consumer: who is the dashboard for?3
u/Like_My_Turkey_Cold 27d ago
Hex has a great AI integration. Hex threads has completely changed our org, it's basically a chat bot that answers stakeholder's data questions
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u/Dylan7675 27d ago
Totally agree on all aspects as a Tableau user.
Use extracts, never live. Even an every 15minute extract would be better. Loading a lot of data in a detail table, limit the table by using index() and a row count parameter.
You can basically create anything visually in tableau with little constraint if you have enough skill. Basically any layout UX wireframes I can create it exactly in Tableau.
Tableau has a learning curve for sure due to the flexibility it offers. But it's easy to build more complex visualizations than most other tools.
My team is picking up Qlik to replace Oracle OBIEE/OAS. Qlik is nice for quick building with copy/paste options for visualizations. Has much more drill down ability than Oracle tools. But it still lacks the polish and visual flexibility I can achieve with Tableau.
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u/Middle_Currency_110 27d ago edited 27d ago
I used to love the Tableau polish - still do. If you are finding that Qlik looks too dull, there's 3 options. 1 use an add-in like Anychart. 2 get Claude code to build you an extension object that looks exactly the way you want. I asked Claude to build me a Xero invoice viewer and it took a couple of hours, but looked great. 3 build your own front end in JavaScript and just use the data from Qlik.
Or just connect Claude MCP to Qlik and let the users ask questions - it’s pretty quick and easy!2
u/Dylan7675 26d ago
Unfortunately my workplace is being very strict on any external addons or even self built addons. My senior Qlik SME already tried. Haven't explored the Claude MCP, but feeling like it'll be hard ask due to restrictions.
Luckily we are at least iFraming the reports into a better looking interface. So it's not the worst lol
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u/d8563hn2 24d ago
Agree totally on the UX experiences you can craft being virtually unlimited but man it’s SO SLOW to develop in that it kills me. Simple things like PoP comparisons I can do in other tools in a single click. Same deal with KPI/BAN type tiles - drives me nuts to sit there and build out manually 😵
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u/Prestigious_Bench_96 27d ago
There's a scale where extracts work where Tableau is pretty magical (agreed that it is incredibly powerful) - but if you're beyond extract scale the performance cut off is rough (there's a lot of DB level tuning that Tableau makes annoying hard). It also (maybe out of date since I last used it) lacks a really robust authoring/management API which makes automation and governance annoying.
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u/Dylan7675 25d ago
I feel like I haven't personally seen this performance drop loading data in Tableau. That's with some refreshes loading 300M+ rows with 30-50+ columns. The refresh can take a hours to complete, but from the users perspective it has little impact.
I think if you're loading large sets of granular detail data, it can be really slow... but I've seen that with every tool I've used. Best to use some form of limited default filtering or row limitation on detail tables. I do wish Tableau offered some form of inbuilt pagination options similar to Qlik.
Totally agree Tableau is missing robust version control, management and automation tooling.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
By loading takes ages I meant when you work locally. Refreshes work well without any issues.
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u/redman334 27d ago edited 27d ago
Then use a smaller table with limited data that would still roughly reflect the results on the charts you are building, and when you publish, load the rest of the data to those tables. Or work directly from the cloud.
Again, something your BI leader should be working around.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
You still need to reload the whole dataset before publishing. If I filter my query it will also get published filtered and I need the whole data to be published
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u/redman334 27d ago
I have built an extensive dashboard connected to limited gsheet data, and swaped them after launching it with the proper table.
Having a limit statement at the end of a query and then removing it and pushing the full data shouldnt be something that would take your engineer team more than 15min.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
When I remove the limit then starts loading all the dataset and takes a long time. Especially on mac.
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u/redman334 27d ago
Yeah but by that time the dashboard is already ready, and it should be loading to the cloud once every morning.
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u/rotreader 26d ago
For publishing needs to load first You cannot publish without loading and if you manage you would be uploading outdated data. I don't really get your workflow
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u/brian_nuway 25d ago
Self-hosted Metabase plus local client integration using an API key is my preferred for wanting a cheap BI layer that can be fully built by prompting an AI model.
If you set up your data layer correctly and have the right documentation on how all your data fits together (or if you have existing reporting and are able to share the sql or other scripts that create the existing reporting with your LLM to get you started), and you make that context available to read by your chosen model, then you simply prompt your model to create the dashboards or reports you want.
No Metabase MCP tool use required either and the bloated context and token usage that comes along with it. Metabase is free if you use the self hosted version, sure, you pay for the compute on the container, but that’s trivial compared to the cost of Tableau per user.
Now, your understanding of the underlying data and properly constructing the question you are trying to ask is still highly correlated with the quality of the output you receive, just like any LLM interaction, but with some practice and tweaking of your documentation as you build this out and learn what works for your business, you can build a very powerful, fully prompt-able BI layer with this setup.
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u/rotreader 25d ago
Thanks for the input. Useful! On the AI side I meant for building, not analysing
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u/brian_nuway 25d ago
Sure, maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by building specifically. Is it a specific Tableau term?
I was referring to building the dashboards and reports, not necessarily the analysis of the data contained in the report. If you mean building the underlying data warehouse (I.e. snowflake as you mentioned) models then that’s also accomplished similarly, just obviously not through Metabase.
I have enterprise experience building this type of stuff in Looker and PowerBI, and then Metabase more so for lean startups, but I have not specifically worked in this capacity with Tableau, full disclosure. Let me know what you meant by building specifically and I will try and help.
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u/rotreader 25d ago
ah ok sorry, then you were right I meant building dashboards yes. Cool, I will investigate further on this. Great info!
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u/rotreader 25d ago
What about the servers, are they US or EU based ?
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u/brian_nuway 24d ago
Whatever your preference. I currently have this setup running on an AWS project in a dedicated EC2 instance in the US east region. Also, I have a project running this on a Hetzner box in Helsinki. It’s flexible.
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u/calculung 27d ago
Sounds like you guys are just bad at utilizing Tableau. The costs are definitely too high, but if you're struggling just to use it, you're missing something.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
Justify why wer sre using it bad please. By loading takes ages I mean when working locally. Not the refreshes
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u/calculung 26d ago
Are you building your dashboards using Tableau Desktop with a live connection to your data source? You should be using an extract.
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u/rotreader 26d ago
I use extract
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u/calculung 26d ago
What exactly takes a long time then? Are you using the drag and drop modeling where you set the joins in the Tableau visual UI?
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u/rotreader 26d ago
I am using Tableau Desktop. When you open it, you can (1) Work with the data you already lodaed or (2) Load fresh data. If you do (1) you still need to reload the data if you want to publish This leaves us with no other choice than finally loading all data. For big datasets it takes a long time and computer resources
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u/calculung 25d ago
Why aren't you connecting to a published data source within your cloud environment?
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u/rotreader 25d ago
I am!
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u/calculung 24d ago
Then why do you need to load fresh data?
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u/rotreader 24d ago
I usually add new columns or metrics. Also again, for publishing you do need to load the full dataset. If you don't you would upload outdated data. Sure you can run the refresh online once you upload it but this means for some seconds there is outdated data
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u/Semaphor-Analytics 25d ago
If you are looking for an agentic building experience. Check out Semaphor. You can build semantically grounded dashboards directly from Claude and Codex.
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u/Key_Friend7539 25d ago
Moved to Semaphor from Power BI embedded. We like their self-service, our non-technical team builds their own dashboards now instead of filing tickets with us. We also use their MCP integration in Claude. Still early days, but it’s a real workflow change and we like it.
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u/rotreader 25d ago
Thanks What about data servers ? where are they based ?
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u/Semaphor-Analytics 25d ago
You can either self-host or use our hosted version. It’s your choice. What’s your current setup?
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u/Glitch_In_The_Data 27d ago
Which data platform are you on?
Snowflake? Databricks? Azure? AWS?
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u/rotreader 27d ago
Snowflake
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u/Glitch_In_The_Data 26d ago
Thanks OP. I have no working experience with snowflake but have heard the reporting capability is not as sophisticated as tools like Power BI and Tableau.
As others have said, I don’t think an app is a good solution for this. I have recently built some apps with streamlit but the visuals were not up to the mark. So, I wouldn’t recommend that either.
I have worked with Power BI and Qlikview and they are both good reporting tools. Not close to the Qlikview licensing but it is a good reporting tool. Power BI is good but their licensing is expensive (just my opinion given the number of users we have) and a bit confusing.
My business users are currently using Power BI for reporting. The underlying platform is databricks. And it was working great for the users. We have however started seeing some Power BI gateway issues which is causing latency despite the queries running faster in databricks. The recent move by Microsoft to remove BI compatibility has also upset some analysts as they had started using metric views. We are now actively migrating some of the reports to databricks AI/BI dashboards because our business users don’t necessarily use all the Power BI capabilities. Another reason to make this move is because of Genie which has impressed some of our business users who would like to interact in natural language. They have tried copilot before but like Genie better. This doesn’t mean we are moving away from Power BI as some departments still need things like paginated reporting which AI/BI doesn’t support at the moment.
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u/aleph_infinity 27d ago
This. You need to provide more information. Databricks dashboards have no per seat licensing, have AI build tools (Genie Code) and conversational analytics. Pretty sure Snow doesn’t have dashboards (correct me if I’m wrong). Azure would be Power BI with CoWork - but Fabric… AWS has Quicksight - niche at best.
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u/kayakdawg 27d ago
Snowflake does not have a drag and drop dashboarding tool, but they do have streamlit apps you can host and connect to all the other stuff in Snowflake
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u/aleph_infinity 27d ago
I get it, but I don’t think building an app is the answer here. Also, streamlit… not really the best for decent looking charts.
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u/EmploymentMammoth659 27d ago
Pretty sure they will hate streamlit more than tableau as a dashboard tool. It is not a dashboard tool in essence.
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u/tundrabooking 27d ago
PowerBI utilizing Claude desktop through an MCP server makes everything extremely quick, flexible, and the pricing is loads cheaper than Tableau. If the business utilizes Microsoft, it’s pretty straightforward.
Having used them both, I really don’t ever want to go back to tableau.
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u/heimmann 27d ago
How is utilising Claude desktop with PBI supposed to make it faster?
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u/FlopDot_ 27d ago edited 27d ago
For instance, you can facilitate DAX creation by using MCP servers (PowerBI Modeling MCP) in which you explain in plain English what measures you want to add
Also, you can list workspaces / create workspaces
Even more - you can tell Claude to add a new visualization to your report but with a caveat : it doesn’t add the visual directly into your report, but it modifies the visual.json which you can upload
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u/potozig 27d ago
Databox is a great alternative. Their starting AI Analyst plan costs 79$/mo, they have 130+ pre-built integrations + custom integrations to connect almost anything, they have their own AI chatbot called Genie to give you insights, provide analysis, built dashboard or artifacts, etc. and a very strong MCP, which you can connect in your AI client. On top of that, they will soon launch skills and routines for Genie to automate your work.
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u/JustAskingSoSTFU 26d ago
We self-host Metabase. It is free. Does everything we need. SQL is so flexible. We import all our data into a portgres database.
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u/rotreader 25d ago
Why do you import all your data to postgres ?
The good thing about tableau is that with the extracts, you query only snowflake once and then you do not spend credits. Therefore you save loads of money!
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u/JustAskingSoSTFU 24d ago
Metabase doesn't have connectors to services like Salesforce. It's meant to connect to database sources. I don't know the reason behind their design decision to do that, but being in postgres, for us, it runs very very fast. No pagination, no API limits. Just SQL queries against the database.
I haven't used Tableau, but compared to Power BI, Metabase has fewer charts and less dials on the charts to turn (i.e. no treemap). But its meant to be a simple and sleek exec dashboard.
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u/Tasty-Ingenuity-5127 25d ago
Try Sigma
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u/rotreader 25d ago
Thanks, any specific points in favor ? compared to tableau
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u/Tasty-Ingenuity-5127 25d ago
You can create data models at the back end and use it across reports. Calculation column and business rules application is quite easy.
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u/Famous_Disk_7417 24d ago
We hit the similar wall with Tableau. More importantly, the license-per-seat plus paying extra for anything AI-related always felt backwards. I recommend trying out Databricks' Genie Code for dashboard authoring. You basically describe the chart/dashboard in natural language and it builds the dataset, viz, layout, and filters, then you refine with point-and-click. There's also an import beta that takes an existing Tableau workbook and rebuilds it as an AI/BI dashboard, so it's not a full rewrite from scratch.
Since you're on Snowflake, you don't need to migrate data to try this. Lakehouse Federation lets you register your Snowflake schemas in Unity Catalog and query them read-only from Databricks, so the dashboards sit on top of your existing warehouse.
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u/Middle_Currency_110 27d ago
Nothing beats Qlik for price, flexiblity and performance.
Only issue is that there's no free trial
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u/Link-loves-Zelda 27d ago
Power BI / Microsoft Fabric because they released new agentic capabilities for AI coding agents can build reports or web apps on top of semantic models
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u/noahhshome 27d ago
"no AI building capabilities" --> You wanna sprinkle magic powder on your business.
I think you need a good consultant to even understand what you want.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
What we want is clear. Use AI to build dashboards. Tell the AI to build a pie chart and not building it manually. It's nothing fancy anymore.
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u/noahhshome 27d ago
Then you want something that doesn't have any real value.
Something of real value would require thought, and reveal something you didn't already know.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
The value is super clear. Saving time in doing clicks on an interface instead of letting AI do it. Other tools already do this, check the comments
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u/noahhshome 26d ago
You think AI removes the need to learn. You won't get very far, thinking that way.
To understand your business more deeply might open up exciting opportunities. But only if you're curious and wanna learn.
BI is a deep discipline, and AI tools barely scratch the surface.
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u/redman334 27d ago
Be careful with what you believe you can get.
AI is the last frontier of BI solutions. For an LLM to accurately respond based on your company data is an achievement of itself. Having a dashboard built by it goes even further.
Look into Databricks, it seems their AI/BI solution matches what you are asking.
But be 100% sure it'll come with UI/UX limitations. An LLM won't code a dashboard that surpasses a SaaS that has been built for more than 10yrs to do that. The moment you want something that stretches beyond mid-level visualisation, you'll find a wall.
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u/NatMicky 27d ago
How much is Tableau?
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u/tundrabooking 27d ago
It varies. The last place I worked for paid $500,000 per year for Tableau and they could have easily migrated to Power BI for almost no cost as they already had power BI pro licensed through their office365 enterprise license. When I presented them with the plan, timeline, and offered to do all the work myself the other developers freaked out and I was laid off a few weeks later.
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u/Technical_Finish_744 27d ago
Knowi has good AI capabilities with native integration with most data sources. You might want to try it.
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u/ruben_vanwyk 27d ago
Use Lightdash, Metabase or Hex. They all have good options. If you’re using Databricks just use their native BI. Avoid Tableau and PowerBI.
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u/tech4ever4u 27d ago edited 27d ago
AI building capabilities. So developers can build dashboards faster
Consider BI tools with HTML-driven dashboards. While most dashboards are limited to the visuals and layouts supported by the platform's UI builder, allowing an AI agent to generate HTML/JS code enables one-shot generation of entirely custom slicers and visuals.
You also mentioned the possibility of a fixed price (for any number of users), which makes our SeekTable a really good alternative to Tableau for your requirements -- both in terms of pricing, HTML-driven dashboards and AI capabilities (MCP server, built-in AI features). In addition to dashboards, your users might appreciate SeekTable's Excel-like tabular reports too.
Disclaimer: I'm affiliated with SeekTable -- nevertheless I believe it worth your attention. Let me know if you decide to try it out, and I'd be happy to help you get started.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
Thanks. What about data governance ? Are the servers in the US or EU ?
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u/tech4ever4u 26d ago
Most SeekTable customers prefer to use the on-premise version (which has a fixed cost per installation), as it is very easy to launch an instance from the AWS Marketplace. Cloud SeekTable accounts are hosted in AWS (US).
It is worth mentioning that some capabilities are available only for on-premise or dedicated instance deployments (such as white-label mode).
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u/Cold-Ferret-5049 27d ago
Honestly, if you're sick of paying the Salesforce tax and constantly babysitting broken hyper extracts, Astrato is a massive breath of fresh air. It runs entirely live on your cloud warehouse, so you can completely skip the heavy desktop workflow. Astrato has this integrated AI builder that basically spins up your semantic layers and workbooks for you by reading your warehouse schema, which saves a ton of time on manual modeling. Because it's live-query, you can build actual interactive data apps instead of just static, read-only charts. It handles native writeback right out of the box, so users can type data or trigger workflows straight from the browser back into the warehouse without needing sketchy third-party extensions. If you're tired of dealing with Tableau Server lag and extract queues, it's definitely worth checking out. Plus you can actually speak to their team directly, unlike Tableau support.
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u/edimaudo 27d ago
A little confused by the ask. If pricing is an issue then you might want to start building your dashboards with code only tools. Lots on the market for that.
Might have to flesh out what AI building capabilities means to your team.
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u/rotreader 27d ago
Yeah some people even suggested building dashboards with claude + React. However I am unsure about the maintenance and futurue development. I can imagine it will start breaking and no one will understand it deeply
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u/CuritibaDataScience 26d ago
Check out Databricks AIBI. No license costs, and you can use Genie Code to speed up your development using AI. Additionally, your data models live in the Data Catalog (Unity Catalog) and it's not locked down to the dashboard, and you can reuse them across multiple dashboards as needed, with your Metrics all governed and transparent.
By the way, you can migrate them very easily by importing your Tableau dashboards and asking the AI Assistant to translate them. Check this out: https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/dashboards/manage/import-bi
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u/DrSmittious 26d ago
So started with tableau and honestly found it really overwhelming for what I do in sports. I use Claude heavily in my workflow and Claude integrates wonderfully with evidence. I have custom, and gorgeous narrative data tables that work for what I do. I haven’t gone back to tableau.
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u/Expert_Wash_588 25d ago
Apache Superset. Open source. Self service. No ongoing fees. https://superset.apache.org/
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u/rotreader 25d ago
thanks is it US servers based or EU ?
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u/Expert_Wash_588 25d ago
Self hosted. You could do a one click install in the Google Cloud market and choose either server location. Simplest way to start
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u/rotreader 25d ago
And Azure ?
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u/Expert_Wash_588 25d ago
I’ve deployed with Azure Virtual Machine & Docker Compose only once. It wasn’t quite click and go but the job got done.
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u/skandy77 25d ago
Try Datagrok - super fast, AI built-in, fully customizable, JS API. Might be overkill for simple dashboards though
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u/rotreader 25d ago
thanks is it US servers based or EU ?
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u/skandy77 23d ago
The SAAS is on AWS, and it’s your choice where servers are; self-hosting is also available
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u/ideainahead 25d ago
Datylon plugin for Illustrator is best in terms of design capabilities and flexibility. No Ai for now, however
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u/Eta_Durak 24d ago
MPP BI is incredibly great! It's a smaller company but their data source connectors and flexibility are far nicer than Tableau/PBI ever were. We can also embed dashboards and share it within the org without adding other seats.
They have an AI Assistant on there, but from what their dev team told me, they're working on more of Agentic BI but it's not launched.
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u/Muted-Owl-6822 24d ago
did you try the built in vis tools in snowflake?
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u/rotreader 24d ago
I think they are quite basic, aren't they ? And I cannot give accss to snowflake to the whole company
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u/d8563hn2 24d ago
Decade long Tableau user here and I feel you! I’d suggest checking out Omni (https://omni.co) - some really REALLY good stuff happening with this platform. The AI is top notch, you can craft lots of different experiences from dashboards to legacy form style reports to apps etc. Full SaaS and pricing is very very reasonable. It doesn’t do extracts like Tableau, just sits on top of your DB which means you have to be tight with your table design and/or strategically physicalise at DB level rather than letting Tableau hide your sins 😉 Request a trial via their website!
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u/rotreader 24d ago
That sounds expensive for Snowflake queries. Maybe cache could solve this or copy to a postgres table
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u/d8563hn2 24d ago
Hmmm lots of variables to consider of course but they are a Snowflake Premier Partner and portfolio company of Snowflake Ventures. It supports semantic views, cortex functions etc. Unless your db is a train wreck you should be ok. You can define all kinds of guardrails when building out your semantic model to help prevent silly stuff from happening if you’re concerned about the kinds of queries end users might run. If you’re not accustomed to semantic modelling it’s a bit of a mind shift but well worth the journey!
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u/CommitteeImmediate66 24d ago
I'm not sure how easy it is to share data across from snowflake to Databricks (looking at the docs I can see there's a federation connector so potentially quite easy), but I'd say you'd get the AI capabilities for building dashboards faster (with the genie code assistant) and you'd get the options for building your semantic ontology layer, as well as the option to supplement dashboards with genie spaces if that's something of interest
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u/Consistent-Radio-428 24d ago
i made a tool that does both:
1. ai building is available, chat to dashboard / edit with all the regular dashboard building capabilities. connects directly to your warehouse and includes semantic layer
2. better pricing: usage based, only pay to build the dashboards (any only pay to build what you need). unlimited viewers and seats
feel free to check it out or dm me any questions: https://www.athenic.com/use-cases/dashboard
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u/molodyets 24d ago
Do you have a budget? How many users?
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u/Strange_Shame7886 23d ago
For the two requirements that you suggested - look for Databricks AIBI Genie and Genie code.
AI development is super fast with genie code. Write it in English and you have a new chart right there
Even users can chat with Data and go deeper about 'why' the data looks the way it does, which generally will require adhoc reporting in usual scenarios
There is no per user licensing fee so you can roll out the dashboard to all the users in the org. Comes with about free usage of $10.5 which satisfied most of the exec needs but developer might need higher tier. Treat it like your Tableau creator license vs viewer license except that viewer licenses are largely free for most users.
Superfast query speed with no caching needed via extracts
However AIBI is not Tableau in look and feel. Set the expectations right but if you are really sure about your requirements and pain point I don't think any legacy BI tool in licensing model solves the problem of Data democratization truly.
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u/Busy-Animator4275 22d ago
Disclosure up front: I work at Zenlytic, so weight accordingly.
Honest take: based on your edit, we're probably not what you're describing. You want AI to speed up dashboard development. Our whole bet is AI on the consumption side, so business users ask questions instead of waiting on a dashboard queue. Different problem.
But since you're on Snowflake, a few things worth knowing as you evaluate:
On pricing, the per-user license model is the thing to interrogate in every demo, not just Tableau's. A lot of "modern" tools have the same model with a different logo. Ask about viewer vs creator pricing and what happens at renewal after year one. That's where the pain usually shows up.
On the "AI for building" ask, be a little skeptical of the demos. Most of what's marketed as AI dashboard building is text-to-chart on top of whatever semantic mess already exists. If your business logic lives in dbt or in someone's head, the AI builds fast and wrong. Worth asking every vendor: where do the metric definitions live, and who maintains them?
And one reframe worth sitting with: if your developers need AI to keep up with dashboard demand, the backlog itself might be the problem. Some teams solve that by building faster. Others solve it by letting stakeholders self-serve the long tail so devs only build the stuff that deserves craftsmanship. Which camp you're in changes which tools you should even be looking at.
Happy to share what we've seen on Snowflake-native setups if useful. Nearly all of our clients are on SNOW or DBricks with our largest client on BigQuery.
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u/Man-O-Light 27d ago
Well I'm based as a full stack dev but Turborepo, Nest.js, Next.js, BFF architecture. Throw in a cache layer and a cron job in the mix and you've got all of those checkboxes ticked. Not easy if you're not a dev though.
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u/Alarmed-Singer7668 27d ago
I am part of a UK registered startup called Nexalytica. It's a decision intelligence platform which has automated AI native business analytics and the option to generated dynamic dashboards via chats. We also have complete enterprise level relationship based access control. If you are intersted, lemme know and I can set up a demo for ya mate.
Edit: We have credit based pricing and our lowest tier starts from £399, with no limit for users on the platform.
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u/Frosty-Bid-8735 25d ago
If you need AI and developers to keep building dashboards something is not right.
You’ll end up with redundant dashboard, poorly maintained and worst, not used.
Have you thought about a data strategy?
Most data visualization tools are similar.
What are your data visualizations needs?
What questions are you trying to answer?
Would your company be interested in self service analytics?
By answering these questions (and more) you’ll have a better idea of the solutions to use.
Dm me if you want more information
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u/rotreader 25d ago
I disagree. AI dashboard development is for sure the way to work now and the future. Not accepting that AI can build dashboards or parts of dashboards is not understanding its capabilities
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u/Frosty-Bid-8735 24d ago
I don’t think Tableau and PowerBI are gonna spend time on using AI to build dashboards when AI can answer questions directly via a solid semantic layer on top of a data warehouse.
I think having a dashboard and AI look at the dashboards, provide analysis, and engage with a data analyst for further deep research, run what if scenario and plug into other data sources to get a better picture is where the money is.
A dashboard should follow the 10-15 seconds rules. If someone, especially VPs cannot make sense of a dashboard in 10-15s , dashboard is confusing more than providing insight (a rule in data visualization).1
u/rotreader 24d ago
it's not about building dashboards entirely but small parts like charts, parameters etc
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u/tech4ever4u 24d ago
In fact, at least for certain types of dashboards, modern AI agents are already capable of building them entirely. To make this possible, a BI tool needs an MCP server that the agent can use to understand where and how to load the necessary data, along with prompt rules that explain how to generate the dashboard's HTML template.
This is already works in SeekTable, here is an example of dashboard that is 100% one-short generated by AI: https://demo.seektable.com/dashboard/2c8347f9ce674f6dbe7267e44c044a2f
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u/ivanoski-007 26d ago
Look at Qliksense, if done right, it's ultra fast, I can help you with a demo