Open Source Qlik Alternatives
A curated collection of the 2 best open source alternatives to Qlik.
The best open source alternative to Qlik is Apache Superset. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source Qlik alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternative to Qlik is Metabase.
Qlik alternatives are mainly Business Intelligence & Reporting. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Qlik.
Business intelligence platform for exploring data, building charts without code and assembling dashboards on any SQL-speaking database.
Apache Superset is a data exploration and visualization platform that can replace or augment the proprietary business intelligence tools a team is paying for. Analysts build charts and dashboards, administrators keep the deployment safe, and developers extend it through an API.
It queries any SQL-speaking datastore that has a Python DB-API driver and a SQLAlchemy dialect, which covers conventional databases as well as engines like Presto, Trino and Athena. The architecture was designed for scale from the start rather than adapted to it.
What arrives out of the box spans the whole path from query to dashboard.
- No-code interface: build charts quickly without writing SQL.
- SQL editor: a web-based editor for the queries that need real control.
- Semantic layer: a lightweight way to define custom dimensions and metrics once.
- Visualizations: a large gallery running from simple bar charts to geospatial views.
- Caching layer: configurable and light, to ease load on the underlying database.
- Security and API: extensible roles and authentication options, plus an API for programmatic customization.
A quickstart gets it running with Docker Compose in a couple of minutes, and production deployments are covered by an official Docker image and a Helm chart. Documentation is split by audience, so analysts, operators and contributors each have their own guide, and the project is governed by the Apache Software Foundation.
Business intelligence tool that lets anyone on a team ask questions of company data and build dashboards without writing SQL.
Metabase gives everyone in a company a way to ask questions of data and get answers back. The bottleneck it removes is the analyst queue, since a question that would otherwise wait for someone fluent in SQL can be answered by the person who actually has it.
Setup is meant to take five minutes, and installation guides cover most environments. A managed cloud option exists with support, backups, upgrades, an SMTP server and an SSL certificate included, and moving between cloud and self-hosting works in both directions.
The product spans several kinds of analysis work.
- Questions and SQL: a visual query builder for anyone, and a native editor for the complex cases.
- Dashboards: interactive boards with filters, auto refresh, fullscreen and custom click behavior.
- Metabot: an AI assistant that answers questions and writes queries, with an agent API for building your own.
- Data Studio: transforms raw data into analytics ready tables, tracks broken dependencies and defines canonical metrics.
- Alerts and subscriptions: send results to email, Slack or a webhook on a schedule.
- Embedding: put charts, dashboards, the data browser or an entire Metabase inside your own app.
Permissions are granular enough for both internal teams and embedded analytics, whether customer data sits in one shared database or each customer gets their own. Content can be curated in a Library and versioned with Git, and the API is open for teams wiring analytics into other systems.
