BI + AI · Redash Alternative

Qrly vs Redash

Qrly is the self-hostable BI + AI platform Redash never became — a stagnant OSS project since the Databricks acquisition, with no AI Ask, no anomaly detection and no enterprise plumbing. Qrly ships natural-language Ask (NL→SQL), AI anomaly detection and BYO LLM (local Ollama / LM Studio or cloud Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure) alongside QQL across 12+ dialects, embedded analytics with signed-JWT, OIDC SSO 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 (no separate product)
  • QQL across 12+ database dialects, OLAP star/snowflake models
  • Live dashboards via WebSocket / PostgreSQL LISTEN-NOTIFY
  • OIDC SSO, multi-tenant row-level security, fully self-hostable
  • Flat pricing for unlimited users
Tie / depends

Dashboard basics & day-one productivity

  • Both give you dashboard cards, lists and drag-and-drop
  • Both are genuinely fast to onboard
  • Both expose a clean REST API
  • Both support Butler-style rule automations
  • Both handle attachments, labels and checklists
Redash wins

Simplicity & tiny-team delight

  • The fastest onboarding in the whole category
  • Generous free tier for personal & small-team use
  • Huge Power-Ups ecosystem for niche workflows
  • Bright, visual UI beloved by non-technical users
  • Perfect for personal to-dos and side projects
Feature
Recommended Qrly Self-hosted · Belgium
Redash Salesforce
Self-hostable on your own infra
Included
SaaS only
No cap / story-point ceremony required
Included
Not cap-based
Built-in customer embed portal
Included
Not part of the product
Native Alert with auto-escalation
Included
No Alert concept
Native scheduled subscription (4 providers)
Included
Create card by email, limited
Query language with history (WAS, CHANGED)
QQL
Search-bar only
Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously
Included
Salesforce Access Enterprise, no LDAP
OIDC SSO user provisioning
Included
Enterprise tier only
AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio)
Included
Salesforce Intelligence cloud only
Multi-tenant architecture out of the box
Included
Single Workspace model
Tableau data import on day 1
Native importer
Via Salesforce — converts to Tableau, not Redash
Flat pricing (unlimited users)
Included
Per-seat, per-month
Productive in under 5 minutes
Included
Redash's core strength
EU data residency (native, not a tier)
Included
Enterprise tier only
No marketplace plugin required for basics
Included
Power-Ups required for most workflows
Boards, dashboard, card drag-and-drop
Included
Included
REST API + webhooks
Included
Included
Advanced Roadmaps / portfolio planning
Included
Not a roadmap tool
Confluence-style wiki / docs included
Question docs
Card descriptions only
Legend Included Partial / extra cost Not available
01 / Scale ceiling

It is not built for teams over ~20

Redash is glorious at five people and one board. By fifteen people and twelve boards the overview is quietly gone — there is no cross-board query, no priority or severity field, no Alert, and no role-based access at list level. What looks like a list of boards in the sidebar is, in practice, a list of things nobody can see into at once.

Teams paper over this with a wiki page full of board links, a weekly stand-up that re-reads every board out loud, and a handful of "rollup" boards that instantly go stale. It is a lot of work to replicate what a real tracker gives you for free.

Qrly keeps the dashboard primitive you already like, but adds the scaffolding — priority, severity, QQL queries, role-based access, dashboards, saved filters — that lets a forty-person team still understand what is going on without a manual rollup ritual.

02 / Power-Up dependency

A real stack adds up quickly

Custom fields, calendar, reports, query budgets, voting, forms, approvals, Gantt — each one is a Power-Up with its own quality, its own pricing, its own integration quirks, and its own vendor to chase when something breaks. Every new Power-Up is also a new place for your data to leak and a new contract for procurement to review.

A modest Redash site with five active Power-Ups easily doubles the Redash bill and triples the support burden when something misbehaves on release day. Upgrading is a coordination problem across half a dozen small vendors, not one.

Qrly ships the most-used of those capabilities natively. One vendor, one contract, one upgrade path, one support line, one security review to do.

03 / Compliance ceiling

No compliance path past a point

There is no self-host option, no EU data residency below Enterprise, and no on-prem AI. For regulated teams — finance, health, public sector, defence suppliers, anyone with DORA, NIS2, HIPAA or a sovereign-cloud clause in their contracts — the conversation with the DPO ends before it really starts.

The practical answer is usually one of two things: "move off Redash" or "never onboard anything remotely sensitive to Redash". Both cap how much real work the tool is allowed to absorb, which eventually caps how useful it can be.

Qrly self-hosts on any Linux box or Kubernetes cluster, keeps your data where you put it, and runs AI locally via Ollama or LM Studio. Auditors, DPOs and security committees tend to like this arrangement a lot.

04 / Not an ITSM

Power-Ups do not replace a real embedded analytics

Customer portals, question queues, Alerts, escalation rules, CSAT surveys and email pipelines are simply not Power-Up territory. There are attempts, but none of them are production-grade for a team answering real paying customers at volume.

In practice most growing Redash shops end up running Zendesk or Tableau Service Management alongside Redash — two tools, two bills, two data islands, two sets of logins, and no single view of work. Engineers copy-paste card links into questions and question links into cards, forever.

Qrly bundles the embed portal, Alert engine and scheduled subscription pipelines into the same product that hosts your boards. Customer questions and engineering cards live in the same database, with one audit trail and one permission model.

Qrly — The Pulse

Annual flat fee · per tenant · cheapest tier
  • Annual fee per tenant €1,875
  • Users inside tenant Unlimited
  • Embedded Analytics portal Included
  • alerts and subscriptions Included
  • OIDC, SSO, on-prem AI Included
  • Self-hosting Included
3-year TCO (single tenant, 50 users): €5,625
Annual flat fee per tenant. Unlimited users & projects inside the tenant. Multi-tenant deployments scale tier-by-tier.

Redash Premium

Per-seat monthly · Salesforce Cloud
  • Free 10 boards / Workspace
  • Standard ~€5 / user / mo
  • Premium ~€10 / user / mo
  • Enterprise ~€17.50 / user / mo
  • Power-Ups Extra per vendor
  • OIDC Enterprise only
3-year TCO (50 users, Premium): ≈ €18,000
Excludes Power-Ups, Enterprise upgrades & embedded analytics tooling.

The standard migration path

Qrly reads Redash's native JSON export and its REST API directly. There is no third-party ETL step, no paid migration consultant and no scripting weekend required. The importer has been exercised against Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise Workspaces.

  1. Export from Redash. Use Redash's built-in per-board JSON export, or connect via API key and token — works for every tier including Free. The importer paginates automatically for Workspaces with hundreds of boards.
  2. Map the hierarchy. Workspaces become Qrly tenants. Boards become projects. Cards become questions. Lists map to statuses (or to a custom field — your call, revisit it later). Labels and colours come across unchanged.
  3. Import cards with everything attached. Checklists, attachments, comments, labels, custom field values, due dates, cover images and members are preserved. Redash card IDs can be retained as external references so old deep-links still resolve.
  4. Sync users via OIDC. Point Qrly at Salesforce Access, Okta, Entra ID or your IdP of choice. Users keep their existing credentials and group memberships, and provisioning stays in sync going forward.
  5. Run in parallel. Keep Redash read-only for a handover period — typically 30 days — while users adjust to the new home, then archive the old Workspace once nobody misses it. Nothing is deleted until you say so.
Is Qrly an enterprise Redash alternative?

Yes — that is exactly the gap Qrly fills. Redash is unbeatable for personal task lists and small-team projects, and we would never argue otherwise. Once the headcount passes about 20, or you need Alerts, a embedded analytics, role-based access, multi-tenant separation or a compliance story for your DPO, Qrly takes over with the dashboard boards you already like and the enterprise plumbing Redash was never designed to carry.

Can Qrly import Redash boards?

Yes. Qrly reads Redash's native JSON export, or pulls directly via the Redash REST API using an API key and token. Boards become projects, lists become statuses, cards become questions — with checklists, labels, custom fields, attachments, comments, due dates and members preserved. Redash card IDs can be kept as external references so old deep-links and Slack pastes continue to resolve after the cutover.

What happens to our Power-Ups?

Most Power-Ups exist to patch Redash limitations — custom fields, calendar view, reports, query budgets, voting, forms, approvals. The equivalents in Qrly are native features, not bolt-ons, so teams typically consolidate four or five Power-Ups into one built-in product. Integrations with Slack, GitHub, Tableau, email and CI all ship with Qrly directly, and the remaining long-tail Power-Ups are usually replaced by a webhook or a line of QQL.

Why move off Redash as the team grows?

Past roughly 20 people and a dozen boards, Redash runs out of runway: no cross-board query, no priority or severity, no Alert, no role-based access at list level, no on-prem option, no customer-facing portal. Teams either bolt Power-Ups and a second product (Zendesk, Tableau Service Management) onto Redash to paper over the gap, or they move to a tool that covers it natively. The second option is usually cheaper and definitely less fragile.

Does Qrly have the same visual simplicity as Redash?

Yes. Dashboard boards with drag-and-drop, quick-add cards, checklists, labels, cover images and attachments are all first-class in Qrly, and the board view is intentionally recognisable to Redash users. The difference is what happens when you need a priority field, an Alert timer, a query across forty boards, or a customer portal — those exist natively instead of requiring a Power-Up, a second product or a spreadsheet.

How much is Qrly for 50 users over 3 years?

€1,875 per year per tenant on the cheapest tier (The Pulse), with unlimited users & projects inside the tenant — €5,625 over three years for a single tenant. Compared to roughly €18,000 for Redash Premium on Salesforce Cloud over the same three-year period — and that is before Power-Up subscriptions, any Enterprise upgrade for OIDC or data residency, and the inevitable bolt-on embedded analytics tooling. Qrly's number does not grow when you hire the 51st person.

Ready to outgrow the sticky notes?

Self-hostable. Flat pricing. Dashboard you already love, with the plumbing Redash never built. Made in Belgium.