Qrly vs Tableau
BI + AI in one self-hosted platform — natural-language Ask (NL→SQL), AI anomaly detection and BYO LLM (local Ollama / LM Studio or Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure) included by default. No expensive Pulse AI add-on, no Salesforce-Cloud-only AI, no per-seat Creator and Explorer sprawl.
Who wins where
No marketing fluff. Here is where each tool is genuinely stronger.
BI + AI in one self-hosted platform — flat pricing
- AI Ask (NL→SQL) with AI anomaly detection & schema descriptions
- BYO LLM — Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure, or local Ollama / LM Studio
- Embedded analytics with signed-JWT included (not a separate SKU)
- Full self-hosting with no 500-user minimum
- Flat license for unlimited users — predictable budgeting
- QQL compiled to 12 SQL dialects — one question, any database
Core business intelligence & workflows
- Both build dashboards over live SQL sources
- Both connect to the major cloud warehouses
- Both have REST APIs & webhooks
- Both support SSO
Ecosystem depth & market ubiquity
- Tableau Exchange connectors, extensions and accelerators
- Tight Salesforce CRM and CRM Analytics integration
- Larger hiring pool already trained on Tableau
- More third-party consulting partners
Feature-by-feature comparison
The features most teams actually evaluate when switching from Tableau.
| Feature | RecommendedQrlySelf-hosted · Belgium | TableauSalesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hostable on your own infra | Included | Tableau Server, still per-seat licensed |
| Same saved question runs on 12 SQL dialects | Included | Custom SQL is dialect-specific |
| Built-in customer embed portal | Included | Embedded Analytics licensed separately |
| Native Alert with auto-escalation | Included | Data-driven alerts, Creator or Explorer |
| Native scheduled subscription (4 providers) | Included | Subscriptions built in, per-seat licensed |
| Visual query builder and raw SQL, round-trip convertible | SQL ⇄ visual | Custom SQL is one-way |
| Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously | Included | Salesforce SSO only |
| OIDC SSO user provisioning | Included | Enterprise tier only |
| AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio) | Included | Salesforce Cloud only |
| Multi-tenant architecture out of the box | Included | Single-tenant per site |
| Connects to your existing warehouse on day 1 | 40 connectors | Native |
| Flat pricing (unlimited users) | Included | Per-seat, per-month |
| Productive in under 5 minutes | Included | Days of configuration |
| EU data residency (native, not a tier) | Included | Enterprise Cloud tier |
| No marketplace plugin required for basics | Included | Plugin sprawl common |
| Dashboards, charts and geographic maps | Included | Included |
| REST API + webhooks | Included | Included |
| OLAP models with ROLLUP, CUBE and GROUPING SETS | Included | Relationships and LOD expressions |
| Export to CSV, JSON, XML and XLSX | Included | Crosstab and PDF export |
Four reasons teams leave Tableau
From real migration conversations with data leaders.
The bill grows faster than the team
Per-seat pricing looks fair at 10 users. By 50 users you are paying more for Tableau Creator, Explorer and Viewer seats plus a separately licensed embedded-analytics deal than you pay for most business applications in your stack.
Qrly is priced as a flat license tied to your company's revenue tier. The 51st user costs nothing. Neither does the 501st.
Authoring sits behind a Creator seat
Reading a dashboard is cheap. Changing what it asks is not: authoring means a Creator licence, and for most organisations Tableau Desktop habits alongside it. Analysts queue behind the handful of people who hold the seats, and the questions nobody bothers to ask are the expensive part.
In Qrly every question opens in the visual builder or the SQL editor, and any chart point drills through to the rows behind it — ROWS mode strips the aggregation, FILTER mode narrows to the group you clicked. No second licence, no second application.
Every capability has its own seat
Authoring needs a Creator. Editing an existing workbook needs at least an Explorer. Reading needs a Viewer. Embedding dashboards in your own product is licensed separately again, and the generative-AI features exist only on Tableau Cloud. The licence matrix, not the software, is what most evaluations get stuck on.
Qrly ships the most-used of those capabilities as standard features. One vendor, one contract, one upgrade path.
Self-hosting is still expensive
Tableau Server is the supported self-host option, and it is still licensed per named user by role — Creator, Explorer, Viewer. The generative-AI features are Tableau Cloud only, so self-hosting and AI are a choice between two things rather than a combination.
Qrly self-hosts on any Linux box or Kubernetes cluster with no user minimum. Your data stays where you put it.
Pricing, honestly
Our own list price in full, and an honest account of how Tableau 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.
Tableau
Per named user, by role · Salesforce · list prices published
- How it charges Per named user, billed annually
- Roles Creator, Explorer and Viewer, priced differently
- Someone who only reads a dashboard Still needs a licensed Viewer seat
- Self-hosted Tableau Server Same per-user licensing as the cloud
- Embedded analytics A separate commercial arrangement
- List prices Published by Salesforce — check tableau.com/pricing
Tableau’s bill is a multiplication: seats × role × twelve months. The fifty people who only ever open a dashboard are fifty Viewer licences, which is exactly the arithmetic that turns a rollout into a rationing exercise. We are not quoting a euro figure here — Salesforce publishes current per-role list prices itself, and that is the only source worth trusting.
Moving from Tableau to Qrly
Most teams are up and running on Qrly within a working week.
The standard migration path
Nothing has to be exported. Qrly reads the same databases and warehouses your Tableau workbooks already point at.
- Point Qrly at the same source. 40 connection types compile to 12 SQL dialects — Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, SQLite, H2, DB2, Sybase and Pervasive — so the warehouse behind your workbooks needs no change.
- Bring the custom SQL across. Paste a data source's SELECT into the Monaco editor. Qrly reverse-engineers a flat SELECT into a visual definition — joins, filters, group by, having, order by with NULL ordering, limit and offset — and reports CTEs, UNION and subqueries as lossy rather than dropping them silently.
- Rebuild the calculations. Calculated fields and level-of-detail expressions become Qrly calculated fields and OLAP measures, each validated server-side by the expression sanitiser before it runs.
- Bring users in via SSO / OIDC. Point Qrly at your identity provider. Users keep their existing credentials.
- Run in parallel. Many teams keep Tableau read-only for 30 days while users adjust, then decommission.
Common questions
Is Qrly a drop-in replacement for Tableau?
How do we move our Tableau workbooks to Qrly?
There is no workbook importer, and nothing that reads a .twbx file. Qrly connects to the same warehouse Tableau already reads — 40 connection types compiling to 12 SQL dialects — so the data itself never moves. Migration means repointing the connection and rebuilding each view as a Qrly question.
Custom SQL data sources come across directly: paste the SELECT into the Monaco editor and Qrly reverse-engineers a flat SELECT into a visual definition, flagging CTEs, UNION and subqueries as lossy.
Can I self-host Qrly like Tableau Server?
Does Qrly have something like SQL?
Yes — QQL, and it compiles to SQL rather than replacing it. QQL is a JSON query document built in the visual builder: a source table or another saved question, column selections, a nested AND/OR filter tree, aggregations, breakouts, having, order-by, joins and a preferred IANA timezone. The compiler emits SQL for 12 dialects, so the same question runs unchanged on Postgres, BigQuery, Snowflake or SQL Server.
For time-based analysis it offers the PAST_N_DAYS, START_OF_MONTH and AT_TIMEZONE operators, an OLAP time hierarchy from year down to hour, and prior-period and prior-year comparison columns.
What about Tableau Prep?
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.