BI + AI · Omni Alternative

Qrly vs Omni

Qrly is the self-hostable BI + AI platform Omni cannot be — Omni is cloud-only, with AI tied to its hosted product and no fully self-hosted option. Qrly ships natural-language Ask (NL→SQL), AI anomaly detection and BYO LLM (local Ollama / LM Studio or cloud Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure) on your own infra, with embedded analytics, QQL across 12+ dialects and flat pricing for unlimited users.

Qrly wins

BI + AI in one self-hosted platform — flat pricing

  • AI Ask (NL→SQL) with AI anomaly detection & performance analyzer
  • BYO LLM — local Ollama / LM Studio or cloud Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure
  • Embedded analytics with signed-JWT (Omni is cloud-only)
  • Fully self-hostable on Linux, Kubernetes or air-gapped
  • QQL across 12+ database dialects, OLAP star/snowflake models
  • Multi-tenant from tenant to project, OIDC SSO, EU data residency
  • Flat licence for unlimited users — no per-seat scaling
Tie / depends

Core BI capabilities

  • Both build questions in SQL and in a visual surface
  • Both ship dashboards with filters and drill-down
  • Both schedule and deliver reports on a timer
  • Both query the cloud warehouse directly
  • Both expose a REST API
  • Both embed into another application
Omni wins

Bidirectional modelling and speed of authoring

  • Bidirectional editing across SQL, spreadsheet and semantic model
  • Built by people who built Looker, and the model shows it
  • A spreadsheet layer analysts already know how to drive
  • Nothing to install and nothing to operate
  • Warehouse-native, with strong Snowflake and BigQuery support
Feature
Recommended Qrly Self-hosted · Belgium
Omni Modern BI
Self-hostable on your own infra
Included
Vendor-hosted; query execution can run in your cloud
Same saved question runs on 12 SQL dialects
Included
Warehouse-native; SQL per source
Built-in customer embed portal
Included
Embedded analytics available
Native Alert with auto-escalation
Included
Scheduled alerts
Native scheduled subscription (4 providers)
Included
Category standard
Visual query builder and raw SQL, round-trip convertible
SQL ⇄ visual
Bidirectional by design
Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously
Included
SSO on paid tiers, no LDAP
OIDC SSO user provisioning
Included
Enterprise tier only
AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio)
Included
Cloud-hosted AI only
Multi-tenant architecture out of the box
Included
One hosted organisation
Connects to your existing warehouse on day 1
40 connectors
Warehouse-native
Flat pricing (unlimited users)
Included
Per-seat pricing
Productive in under 5 minutes
Included
Core yes, full config no
EU data residency (native, not a tier)
Included
Vendor-hosted; region by arrangement
No marketplace plugin required for basics
Included
No marketplace model
Dashboards, charts and geographic maps
Included
Dashboards included
REST API + webhooks
Included
Included
OLAP models with rollup and period-over-period
Included
Semantic model, no cube rollups
Legend Included Partial / extra cost Not available
01 / Warehouse-only

Everything has to be in the warehouse first

Omni is warehouse-native by design: it queries Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks and their neighbours, which is a clean architecture when everything already lands there and a wall when it does not. The operational Postgres behind your product, the MySQL behind a legacy application, the SQL Server finance refuses to move — each needs a pipeline built and paid for before anyone can ask it a question.

Qrly compiles the same query document to 12 SQL dialects across 40 connection types, so a saved question runs unchanged whether the data sits in a warehouse or in the database it was written to. Every connection is read-only, every parameter is bound, and row caps, statement timeouts and concurrency limits are set per connection.

02 / Per-seat pricing

The bill grows with the audience

Omni is priced per seat. That is fine while BI belongs to a data team, and awkward the moment it should belong to everybody: the read-only account for a product manager, the executive who opens one dashboard a month, the support lead who wants the weekly trend — each is a line on the invoice, so each becomes a small negotiation. The predictable outcome is rationed access, screenshots pasted into chat, and shared logins.

Qrly is a flat annual licence tied to your company's revenue tier. The fifty-first user costs nothing and neither does the five-hundredth, and everything is included from day one: alerts, roles, audit log, SSO, OIDC, embedding, EU residency.

03 / Customer-facing analytics

Your customers' data goes through someone else's cloud

If the dashboards are for your own customers rather than your own staff, a hosted-only BI tool changes the compliance conversation. Every embedded view means customer data leaving your infrastructure for a vendor's, another sub-processor on the DPA, and a residency answer you cannot give on your own authority.

Qrly embeds dashboards with a signed JWT and locked parameters from the installation you already run, inside your own perimeter. Multi-tenancy goes the whole way down — tenant, organisation, project, collection — so a reseller or a business unit is a real boundary rather than a filter applied at the end.

04 / No self-host

Regulated industries have no path

Omni is cloud-only. For government, defence, financial services and EU-data-sovereign customers, that is a hard stop. Even a European region, where a vendor offers one, is still a shared cloud you do not operate and cannot audit from the inside.

Qrly self-hosts as a single deployment on any Linux box or Kubernetes cluster. Your questions, your dashboards and your database credentials sit where your compliance team signs off — not in someone else's tenancy.

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.

Omni

Per user · quoted, not published · vendor-hosted
  • How it charges Per user, on an annual agreement
  • List prices Not published — quote only, see omni.co/pricing
  • Deployment Omni-hosted; query execution can be kept in your own cloud
  • Embedded analytics Its own commercial arrangement
  • Warehouse compute Billed separately, by your cloud provider
  • AI features Vendor-hosted models
Omni does not publish a price list, so the honest answer to “what does it cost?” is “book a call” — and the meter behind the answer is people. That is fine while BI belongs to a data team, and awkward the moment it should belong to everybody. Our number is on a public page, and it does not change when you add the hundredth reader.

The standard migration path

There is no record-level migration between BI tools. Both products read the same warehouse, so the move is a rebuild of the layer above it — and a shorter one than teams expect.

  1. Point Qrly at the same connections. Whatever Omni queries, Qrly queries — plus the operational databases Omni cannot reach. Connections are read-only, with per-connection row caps, statement timeouts and concurrency limits.
  2. Bring the SQL across. Paste a saved SELECT into a native question and Qrly reverse-engineers it into a visual definition — joins, filters, group by, having, order by with NULL ordering, limit and offset — flagging CTEs, UNION and subqueries as explicit lossy-feature warnings.
  3. Rebuild the model. Omni's semantic model becomes a Qrly OLAP model: fact table, dimension joins, a dimension and measure catalogue, named hierarchies, and always-applied model filters as a security boundary. Rollup, cube and grouping sets, a year-to-hour time hierarchy, prior-period and prior-year comparison and Top-N within group come with it.
  4. Rebuild dashboards, then wire the filters once. Cascade filters are authored at dashboard level and mapped per card in a card-by-filter matrix, with name matching guessing the obvious ones. Viewers supply a filter id and a value — never a column, never an operator.
  5. Cut over. Keep Omni live for 30 days while people rebuild the views they actually open, then let the subscription lapse at renewal. Nothing is trapped on either side — it was all in the warehouse the whole time.
Can Qrly replace Omni?

For most teams — yes. Qrly covers what Omni is used for day to day: connections to the warehouse, questions built visually or written in SQL, dashboards with cascade filters and live push, scheduled subscriptions, alerts and embedding. Omni's bidirectional editing across SQL, a spreadsheet layer and its semantic model is genuinely excellent, and Qrly has no spreadsheet layer — teams who live in that surface should weigh it properly rather than take our word for it. The difference that usually decides it is elsewhere: everything Omni runs in its own cloud, and Qrly runs in yours.

How does Qrly's modelling layer compare to Omni's?

Omni's model is its strongest idea and we are not going to pretend otherwise: edit in SQL, in the spreadsheet layer or in the semantic model, and the change flows to the other two. Qrly's equivalent is narrower and differently shaped — a visual QQL query document compiled to 12 SQL dialects, SQL-to-visual reverse engineering for any flat SELECT, and OLAP star and snowflake models with a dimension and measure catalogue, named hierarchies and always-applied model filters as a security boundary. If a shared semantic model is the centre of your practice, evaluate both carefully. If running it on your own hardware matters more, there is only one answer.

Can the AI run on our own hardware?

Yes, and that is the point of it. Qrly's AI layer points at whichever model you configure — a local Ollama or LM Studio instance on your own GPU, or Claude, Gemini, OpenAI or Azure if you prefer a hosted one. It writes SQL from a plain-English question, explains an existing query, suggests calculated fields and narrates results. It is schema-only by default; letting a model see actual rows is an explicit per-connection opt-in, and there is a per-connection system prompt you control. Omni is a cloud service, so its AI is a cloud service too.

Can we embed dashboards in our own product?

Yes, and it is in the base licence. Dashboards embed with a signed JWT carrying locked parameters, so an embedded view is scoped before it reaches the browser and each customer sees only their own slice. There is no separate embedded SKU, no per-portal fee and no OEM negotiation. Multi-tenancy runs the whole way down — tenant, organisation, project, collection — so a reseller or a business unit gets its own space rather than a filtered view of yours.

Can Qrly import my Omni data?

Not as records, and no BI vendor honestly can — dashboards and semantic models have no portable form between products. What makes it painless is that both tools read the same warehouse: point Qrly at the same connection and the tables are already there. Paste your saved SQL into native questions, and Qrly converts a flat SELECT into a visual definition covering joins, filters, group by, having, order by with NULL ordering and limit/offset, reporting CTEs, UNION and subqueries as explicit lossy-feature warnings rather than dropping them quietly. The model is rebuilt as a Qrly OLAP model.

How much is Qrly for 50 users over 3 years?

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 organisation, one installation. Omni does not publish list prices, so there is no honest figure to set beside that — it is quoted per user, on an annual agreement. What you can compare before the call is the shape of the two models: their number moves when you add people, ours moves only when your turnover does.

Ready to run BI on your own infrastructure?

Self-hostable. Flat pricing. Embedding, alerts and OLAP models in the base licence. Made in Belgium.