Qrly vs ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is a search-driven BI suite: somebody models a worksheet layer first, then business users ask questions of it — and the AI runs in ThoughtSpot's cloud, so the prompts leave your perimeter. Qrly is BI + AI in one focused self-hostable platform: natural-language Ask (NL→SQL) on your choice of local LLM (Ollama, LM Studio) or cloud (Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure), with flat pricing for unlimited users.
Who wins where
No marketing fluff. ThoughtSpot has legitimate fans — here is where each tool is genuinely stronger.
BI + AI in one self-hosted platform, flat pricing
- AI Ask (NL→SQL) on your hardware — ThoughtSpot AI is cloud-only
- BYO LLM: local Ollama / LM Studio, or Claude / Gemini / OpenAI / Azure
- Embedded analytics with signed-JWT for unlimited customer tenants
- AI anomaly detection, schema descriptions, performance analyzer built-in
- Full self-hosting with EU data residency — no cloud-only AI
- Flat licence for unlimited users — the fee never moves with usage
Dashboards, automations & integrations
- Both support rich dashboards and reports
- Both schedule and deliver reports on a timer
- Both expose a REST API and webhooks
- Both query the cloud warehouse directly
- Both integrate with the usual suspects
Search-first analytics at enterprise scale
- Natural-language search is the strongest in the category
- SpotIQ surfaces findings nobody thought to ask for
- A curated worksheet layer keeps business users on rails
- Live query pushdown into Snowflake, BigQuery and Databricks
- Large-enterprise governance and a deep partner network
Feature-by-feature comparison
The features most teams actually evaluate when switching from ThoughtSpot.
| Feature | RecommendedQrlySelf-hosted · Belgium | ThoughtSpotThoughtSpot |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hostable on your own infra | Included | Cloud-first; self-managed is heavy |
| Same saved question runs on 12 SQL dialects | Included | Worksheet per connection |
| Built-in customer embed portal | Included | Separate embedded product line |
| Native Alert with auto-escalation | Included | Monitors and KPI alerts, no escalation |
| Native scheduled subscription (4 providers) | Included | Liveboard email schedules |
| Visual query builder and raw SQL, round-trip convertible | SQL ⇄ visual | Search generates SQL one-way |
| Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously | Included | SSO on the paid tiers, no LDAP |
| OIDC SSO user provisioning | Included | Enterprise tier only |
| AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio) | Included | Sage AI — cloud only |
| Multi-tenant architecture out of the box | Included | Single workspace model |
| Connects to your existing warehouse on day 1 | 40 connectors | Cloud warehouse connections |
| Flat pricing (unlimited users) | Included | Per-seat, per-month |
| Productive in under 5 minutes | Included | Model the worksheets first |
| EU data residency (native, not a tier) | Included | Enterprise negotiated |
| No marketplace plugin required for basics | Included | Direct integrations, no marketplace |
| Boards, dashboard, multiple views | Included | Included |
| REST API + webhooks | Included | Included |
| OLAP models with rollup and period-over-period | Included | Worksheets, no cube rollups |
Four reasons teams leave ThoughtSpot
From real migration conversations with data and analytics leaders.
The search bar only works once somebody builds the model
ThoughtSpot's search bar is the demo, and it is a good one. What the demo does not show is the work in front of it: worksheets built and joined, columns renamed the way business users actually speak, synonyms curated, and all of it maintained as the warehouse moves underneath.
Organisations with a data team to own that curation get real value from it. Everyone else discovers that the search bar answers confidently and wrongly the moment the model behind it has drifted, and that nobody is quite sure who owns the drift.
Qrly picks one model — connections, questions, dashboards — and lets you start on the first afternoon. A star or snowflake OLAP model is there when you want governed dimensions and measures, with model filters always applied as a security boundary. It is not a prerequisite for your first answer.
Your prompts leave your perimeter
ThoughtSpot's AI — Sage, the SpotIQ narratives, the answers written back in plain English — runs in ThoughtSpot's cloud against a model ThoughtSpot chose. For a bank, a hospital group or a public body the question is not whether the feature is good; it is whether schema names, column values and analyst prompts may leave the building at all.
The usual answer is to switch the AI off, which removes the reason the platform was bought, or to open a procurement exercise that outlasts the evaluation that started it.
Qrly's four AI personas point at whichever model you configure — a local Ollama or LM Studio instance on your own GPU, or Claude, Gemini, OpenAI or Azure. Schema-only by default; letting a model see actual rows is an explicit per-connection opt-in. Ask writes SQL you can read before you run it.
You cannot read back what the search bar wrote
A search-driven answer is generated for you, which is excellent right up to the moment somebody asks how the number was produced. The phrase you typed is not the query that ran, the query that ran is not something you edit, and an engineer who wants the same logic in a pipeline has to rebuild it from the description.
That matters most where it matters most: the board figure, the regulatory return, the invoice reconciliation. Anything that has to be defended needs a definition somebody can read, review and version — not a phrase that happened to work last Tuesday.
Qrly's questions round-trip. A visual definition compiles to SQL you can read; a flat SELECT reverse-engineers into a visual definition, with CTEs, UNION and subqueries reported as explicit lossy-feature warnings rather than quietly dropped. The analyst edits in the builder, the engineer edits the SQL, and it is the same question either way.
Regulated teams run out of options
ThoughtSpot is cloud-first. A self-managed deployment exists, but it is a heavyweight installation with its own hardware footprint and its own operational burden, and it is not where the product's development energy goes. For teams with strict residency obligations under GDPR or sector law the practical choice is a US-operated cloud service or an on-premise estate somebody has to run properly.
Qrly self-hosts as a single deployment on any Linux box or Kubernetes cluster, with no user minimum and no per-seat floor. Your data stays where you put it, and EU residency is the default because the product was built in the EU.
Pricing, honestly
Our own list price in full, and an honest account of how ThoughtSpot 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.
ThoughtSpot
Per user · an entry plan published, the rest quoted
- How it charges Per user, on an annual plan
- Entry plan Published — check thoughtspot.com/pricing
- Pro and Enterprise Quoted, on an annual commitment
- Embedded analytics ThoughtSpot Everywhere, licensed separately
- Deployment ThoughtSpot cloud — self-managed is an enterprise arrangement
- AI features Bundled by tier, on vendor-hosted models
The published entry plan is a real price; everything a mid-size company would actually sign is a negotiation. The meter is people, so letting the whole company search the warehouse is a per-head multiplication — which is the opposite of what a search-first product is for. Check their pricing page for the current published figures.
Moving from ThoughtSpot to Qrly
Most teams are up and running on Qrly within a working week.
The standard migration path
There is no record-level migration between BI tools, and any vendor promising one is selling you a CSV round-trip. What actually moves is the layer underneath: the warehouse connection, the SQL, and the definitions you rebuild on top of them.
- Point Qrly at the same warehouse. Qrly speaks 40 connection types and compiles to 12 SQL dialects — Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, SQLite, H2, DB2, Sybase and Pervasive — so the tables your worksheets sit on are available on day one, read-only, with a per-connection row cap and statement timeout.
- 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 — reporting CTEs, UNION and subqueries as explicit lossy-feature warnings rather than dropping them quietly.
- Rebuild the modelled layer as an OLAP model. A worksheet becomes a star or snowflake model: fact table, dimension joins, a dimension and measure catalogue, named hierarchies, and always-applied model filters acting 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.
- Bring users in via OIDC. Sync users from Azure AD, Okta, JumpCloud or Google Workspace. People keep their existing credentials and group memberships, and access is scoped by tenant from day one.
- Run in parallel. Many teams keep ThoughtSpot read-only for 30 days while people rebuild the Liveboards they actually open and old links age out, then let the subscription lapse at the next renewal. There is no rush — Qrly has nothing to gain from an aggressive cutover.
Common questions
Is Qrly a replacement for ThoughtSpot?
Can Qrly import my ThoughtSpot data?
What about SpotIQ and natural-language search?
Why choose a focused tool over a search-first platform?
Does Qrly include alerting and embedding in the base licence?
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.