Qrly vs Mode
Mode (now part of ThoughtSpot) is a SQL-and-notebook workbench — it has report alerts and white-label embeds, but not a governed BI layer, and its roadmap now sits inside ThoughtSpot's. Qrly is BI + AI in one self-hostable platform: natural-language Ask (NL→SQL) on your choice of local LLM (Ollama, LM Studio) or cloud (Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure), live dashboards, multi-channel alerts, and embedded analytics via signed-JWT.
Who wins where
No dunking. Mode is genuinely loved for good reason. Here is where each tool is stronger.
BI + AI in one self-hosted platform, flat pricing
- AI Ask (NL→SQL) — Mode has no native NL→SQL workflow
- BYO LLM: local Ollama / LM Studio, or Claude / Gemini / OpenAI / Azure
- Embedded analytics with signed-JWT and a per-tenant portal, in the base licence
- Multi-channel alerts with escalation — email, Slack and webhook
- AI anomaly detection, schema descriptions, performance analyzer
- Self-hosting, multi-tenant, flat pricing — independent of ThoughtSpot
UI polish, SQL editing, API, integrations
- Both have clean, modern UIs
- Both give analysts a first-class SQL editor
- Both expose a REST API for automation
- Both integrate with Slack and common IdPs
- Both schedule report delivery by email
Notebooks & analyst-led exploration
- Python and R cells alongside SQL in one document
- Visual Explorer iterates charts fast on a result set
- Strong fit for one-off, exploratory analysis
- Nothing to run — fully managed SaaS
- Analysts already know the notebook workflow
Feature-by-feature comparison
The features most teams actually evaluate when deciding between Qrly and Mode.
| Feature | RecommendedQrlySelf-hosted · Belgium | ModeMode |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hostable on your own infra | Included | SaaS only |
| Visual query builder for non-SQL users | Included | Visual Explorer works on a SQL result |
| Built-in customer embed portal | Included | White-label embeds, no tenant portal |
| Native Alert with auto-escalation | Included | Report alerts, no escalation policy |
| Native scheduled subscription (4 providers) | Included | Scheduled report email only |
| Visual query builder and raw SQL, round-trip convertible | SQL ⇄ visual | SQL and notebooks, no visual spec |
| Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously | Included | SAML SSO Enterprise, no LDAP |
| OIDC SSO user provisioning | Included | Enterprise tier only |
| AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio) | Included | Cloud AI only |
| Multi-tenant architecture out of the box | Included | Single organization per workspace |
| Connects to your existing warehouse on day 1 | 40 connectors | Warehouse connections |
| Flat pricing (unlimited users) | Included | Per-seat, annual blocks |
| Productive in under 5 minutes | Included | Fast for SQL users, less so for others |
| EU data residency (native, not a tier) | Included | Enterprise region pinning |
| No marketplace plugin required for basics | Included | Integrations catalogue |
| Dashboards and shared reporting | Included | Included |
| REST API + webhooks | Included | Included |
| OLAP models with rollup and period-over-period | Included | Reusable queries, not OLAP models |
| Markdown analysis reports with export | Analysis reports | Markdown cells in notebooks |
Four reasons data teams leave Mode
From migration conversations with data, engineering and IT leaders. Analysts who live in a notebook, stay where you are.
A notebook is not a governed BI layer
Mode gives an analyst a SQL editor, a Python or R notebook and a report builder in one document. What it does not give the organisation is the layer underneath: a verified badge with an audit log, results materialised on a refresh interval, a per-user query budget and a governor, or a modelled star schema whose filters are always applied as a security boundary. The moment somebody asks "which of these four reports is the one finance signs off?" the limits show.
Qrly is built as a BI platform first. Verification with an audit log, result materialisation, four opt-in caching tiers, the query governor and OLAP models with rollup, cube and grouping sets are part of the core, not a convention the team agrees to follow. Permissions run Tenant to Organisation to Project to Collection, so analysts, engineering and finance each get their own surface without a second installation.
The meter is people
Mode does not publish a price for its paid plans — they are quoted, per user, on an annual commitment — so the sticker is whatever comes back from a sales cycle. What is public is the shape of it, and the shape is what matters: the bill tracks headcount, and OIDC, SAML and region pinning sit in the top tier. The question to take into the renewal is not what the number is today, but what happens to it the year those reports become something the whole company reads.
Qrly is priced on revenue, not seats: a €15M-revenue company pays €6,300 a year — €18,900 over three years — for unlimited everything, one organization, one installation. That is €18,900 over three years for one organization, not the first-year run rate of a per-seat tool. Headcount growth, new teams, external contractors and the occasional customer-facing portal user do not change the bill. Annual fee on revenue, unlimited everything, one organization, one installation, and you move on.
No self-host option
Mode is SaaS only. Data residency is tied to the Enterprise upsell, there is no on-prem option, and no path for regulated or air-gapped teams. For defence, healthcare, finance, and public-sector teams this is usually a non-starter — procurement simply cannot approve a tool that cannot run inside the organisation's own network perimeter.
Qrly runs on your Linux box, your Kubernetes cluster, or your sovereign-cloud tenant. No data leaves your boundary if you do not want it to. Backups, encryption keys, audit logs and user directories stay inside the same controls you already apply to the rest of your stack. If your security team maintains a "no external SaaS for sensitive data" policy, Qrly fits that posture without exceptions.
Enterprise features live behind tiers
SSO, OIDC, audit log, data residency and the admin console live on Enterprise or Enterprise+. The features you need to deploy Mode responsibly at 50+ users are rarely in the tier you first signed up on, and the upgrade path involves a sales conversation rather than a self-serve toggle. Teams that adopt Mode bottom-up often hit this wall twelve months in.
Qrly ships SSO, OIDC, audit log and EU data residency in every license. Compliance is a default, not an upgrade path. Administrators do not have to justify a tier jump to IT security to enable the controls IT security already requires — the controls are already there on day one.
Pricing, honestly
Our own list price in full, and an honest account of how Mode charges. The Qrly column is the published schedule evaluated at €15M of revenue — the number of people using it does not move it.
Methodology, 28 August 2026. Qrly publishes a complete rate card, so the figures in our column are quoted exactly. The other column describes a pricing model rather than quoting a number: vendor list prices change without notice and several of these vendors do not publish one at all. For current figures, go to the vendor’s own pricing page.
Qrly
Annual licence · priced on your revenue · unlimited users, one organisation, one installation
- Annual licence at €15M revenue €6,300
- Per analyst / per viewer €0
- Per query, per credit, per capacity unit €0
- Embedded dashboard consumers €0
- Embedding, alerts, OIDC/SSO, row-level rules Included at every tier
- Self-hosting and bring-your-own LLM Included at every tier
Three years of licence: €18,900
That is our published schedule evaluated at €15M of revenue — 0.18% of the first €500k, then 0.12%, 0.0525% and 0.027% on each tranche above it. It does not move when you add users. The whole rate card, from the €900 floor upward, is on the pricing page.
Mode
Per user, annual · paid plans quoted · now part of ThoughtSpot
- How it charges Per user, on an annual commitment
- Free tier Small teams, limited
- Paid plans Quoted — contact sales, see mode.com/pricing
- Deployment Mode cloud only — no self-hosted edition
- Enterprise controls SSO and region pinning sit in the top tier
- Ownership Mode has been part of ThoughtSpot since 2023
Mode’s paid plans are quoted rather than listed, so there is no defensible three-year figure to put here. What is knowable before a call: the meter is people, SSO and data residency live in the top tier, and the roadmap now sits inside ThoughtSpot. Qrly ships SSO and EU residency at the €900 floor.
Moving from Mode to Qrly
Most teams are up and running on Qrly within a working week.
The standard migration path
Everything worth taking out of Mode is SQL. Mode's API exposes the query behind every report, and the report editor shows it too, so most teams script a one-shot export and keep Mode read-only during a short overlap. The real work is deciding which reports deserve to become governed questions.
- Export the queries. Pull the SQL behind every report using a personal access token or a service account, and keep the report title, owner and last-run date alongside it. That inventory is what tells you which fifteen of your two hundred reports anyone actually opens.
- Recreate the connections. Point Qrly at the same warehouse. Qrly speaks 40 connection types and compiles to 12 SQL dialects, and every connection is handed out as a read-only pooled user with a per-statement timeout, a max-row cap and a concurrency limit.
- Paste the SQL in. Mode parameters become Qrly template variables, bound as prepared-statement parameters rather than substituted into the string. The sanitizer accepts SELECT and WITH only, so anything that was quietly writing to the warehouse surfaces on the first run instead of the first incident.
- Convert what is worth converting. Any flat SELECT reverse-engineers into a visual QQL definition — joins, filters, group by, having, order by with NULL ordering, limit and offset — which is what unlocks drill-down, interactive filters and dialect portability. CTEs, UNION and subqueries are flagged as lossy and stay as native SQL.
- Sync users and run in parallel. Point Qrly's OIDC endpoint at Azure AD, Okta or Google so people keep their existing credentials, then keep Mode read-only for 30 days. Analysts who want a notebook for exploratory work can keep one — Qrly does not need to be an all-or-nothing replacement.
Common questions
Is Qrly a Mode alternative for analytics teams?
Can Qrly import Mode reports?
What about Mode's Python and R notebooks?
Why pick a dedicated BI platform over Mode?
Does Qrly have a visual builder for people who do not write SQL?
How much is Qrly for 50 users over 3 years?
The full alternatives matrix
Evaluating Qrly against another tool? Jump to the detailed side-by-side.