# Power BI Alternatives 2027: 11 Paid, Free & Open-Source

Source: https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/power-bi/
Prices checked: 2026-11-11 (Zekai Price Ledger)

The best Power BI alternatives in 2027 are Tableau (best overall, $15/user/mo billed yearly), Julius (best free plan) and Metabase (best open source, AGPL-3.0). Power BI itself starts at $14/user/mo billed yearly. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 11 Nov 2026; 8 more are compared below, including 1 with a free plan and 2 open source.

| Tool | Type | Starting price | Free plan limit | Licence | Best for | Price checked | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power BI (the tool being replaced) | — | $14/user/mo billed yearly | Free account; sharing needs Pro | — | — | 2026-11-11 | [pricing](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-bi/pricing) |
| Tableau | Free plan + paid | $15/user/mo billed yearly | Tableau Desktop Free Edition runs locally; cannot publish or share online | — | Governed enterprise dashboards and visual analysis | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://www.tableau.com) [pricing](https://www.tableau.com/pricing/teams-orgs) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/tableau-with-ai/) |
| Looker | Paid | Not checked | No free plan | — | Semantic-model BI on Google Cloud data |  | [site](https://cloud.google.com/looker) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/google-cloud-looker-gemini/) |
| ThoughtSpot | Paid | $25/user/mo billed yearly | No free plan | — | Natural-language search over warehouse data | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://www.thoughtspot.com) [pricing](https://www.thoughtspot.com/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/thoughtspot/) |
| Hex | Free plan + paid | $36/editor/mo | Community: free, small compute, hobby projects | — | Notebook-style analysis that publishes as apps | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://hex.tech) [pricing](https://hex.tech/pricing/) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/hex/) |
| Julius | Free plan + paid | $20/mo | Free daily credits, 2 GB RAM, Notebooks | — | Chat-based analysis of spreadsheets and CSVs | 2026-11-11 | [site](https://julius.ai) [pricing](https://julius.ai/pricing) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/julius-ai-data-analysis-assistant/) |
| Sigma | Paid | Not checked | No free plan | — | Spreadsheet-style BI live on the warehouse |  | [site](https://www.sigmacomputing.com) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/sigma-computing-ai-analytics/) |
| Domo | Paid | Not checked | No free plan | — | All-in-one BI with built-in data pipelines |  | [site](https://www.domo.com) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/domo/) |
| Omni | Paid | Not checked | No free plan | — | Governed BI with a shared semantic layer |  | [site](https://omni.co) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/omni/) |
| Metabase | Open source | $100/mo (hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | AGPL-3.0 | Self-hosted dashboards for small teams | 2026-11-11 | [pricing](https://www.metabase.com/pricing/) [code](https://github.com/metabase/metabase) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/metabase/) |
| Apache Superset | Open source | Free (self-hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | Apache-2.0 | Large-scale open-source charting on SQL engines |  | [code](https://github.com/apache/superset) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/apache-superset/) |
| Lightdash | Open source | $3000/mo (hosted) | No limit (self-hosted) | MIT | BI built on dbt models | 2026-11-11 | [pricing](https://www.lightdash.com/pricing) [code](https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash) [Zekai page](https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/lightdash/) |

## How each alternative compares with Power BI

- **Tableau** (Free plan + paid, $15/user/mo billed yearly, checked 2026-11-11): Tableau Standard starts at $15 per user per month on an annual contract only, with no monthly plan, and the free Desktop edition cannot publish or share workbooks online. Switch if you need Tableau's visual-analysis depth and can commit to an annual per-user contract. Stay with Power BI if you already live in Microsoft 365 and want monthly billing plus free report authoring in Desktop.
- **Looker** (Paid, Not checked): Looker is sold as an annual platform subscription (Standard edition includes 10 Standard Users and 2 Developer Users) with prices set through Google Cloud sales, using a LookML modelling layer. Switch if your metrics should be defined once in a LookML model on BigQuery or another warehouse. Stay with Power BI if you want published per-user prices and a drag-and-drop report builder without writing modelling code.
- **ThoughtSpot** (Paid, $25/user/mo billed yearly, checked 2026-11-11): ThoughtSpot starts at $25 per user per month billed annually for 5 to 50 users and 25M rows, and its Spotter AI agents answer questions asked in natural language. Switch if business users should ask questions in plain language instead of building reports in a canvas. Stay with Power BI if you want a conventional report-and-dashboard designer plus DAX, tied to Microsoft 365 and Excel.
- **Hex** (Free plan + paid, $36/editor/mo, checked 2026-11-11): Hex mixes SQL, Python and no-code cells in one notebook that publishes as an app; the free Community plan allows small compute, and Professional is $36 per Editor monthly. Switch if your analysts work in SQL and Python and want to publish notebook results as shareable apps. Stay with Power BI if you mainly build point-and-click dashboards for non-technical viewers on a Microsoft stack.
- **Julius** (Free plan + paid, $20/mo, checked 2026-11-11): Julius is a chat interface for uploading CSV, XLSX and SAV files and getting charts; its Free plan runs on daily credits with 2 GB of RAM, and Plus is $20 a month. Switch if you want to drop in a spreadsheet and ask questions in chat without building a data model. Stay with Power BI if you need scheduled refresh from live databases and shared governed dashboards for many viewers.
- **Sigma** (Paid, Not checked): Sigma queries Snowflake, Databricks and other warehouses live through a spreadsheet-style interface, and its public site lists a free trial and demo rather than published plan prices. Switch if finance and ops users want a spreadsheet interface that queries the cloud warehouse directly without extracts. Stay with Power BI if your data already sits in Power BI semantic models and your team knows DAX and Excel.
- **Domo** (Paid, Not checked): Domo bundles data connectors, ETL and dashboards in one cloud platform, and its published AI usage is billed in tokens while platform pricing goes through a custom quote. Switch if you want connectors, data prep and dashboards in a single hosted platform with one vendor. Stay with Power BI if you prefer per-user list pricing and want reports to open directly inside Microsoft 365.
- **Omni** (Paid, Not checked): Omni combines a governed semantic model with spreadsheet-style and SQL exploration, and it publishes no plan prices; its pricing path returned a not-found page when read. Switch if you want a governed semantic layer but also free-form SQL exploration in the same tool. Stay with Power BI if you want published per-user prices and the largest ecosystem of templates, connectors and trained staff.
- **Metabase** (Open source, $100/mo (hosted), checked 2026-11-11): Metabase's open-source edition is AGPL-3.0 and self-hosted free, while its hosted Starter cloud plan is $100 a month including 5 users, then $6 per extra user. Switch if you want to self-host dashboards at no licence cost and let teammates explore data by clicking. Stay with Power BI if you need DAX measures, Excel integration and deep Microsoft 365 or Fabric governance.
- **Apache Superset** (Open source, Free (self-hosted)): Superset is an Apache-2.0 project with a no-code chart builder, SQL editor, caching layer and role-based security, supporting engines such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Trino and ClickHouse. Switch if you have engineers to run it and want a permissive licence with no per-user fees. Stay with Power BI if you want vendor-hosted BI with support and no servers or drivers to maintain yourself.
- **Lightdash** (Open source, $3000/mo (hosted), checked 2026-11-11): Lightdash reads metrics straight from a dbt project, offers an open-source self-hosted tier, and its Cloud Pro plan is $3000 a month with unlimited users and no per-seat pricing. Switch if your metrics already live in dbt and you want BI that reads them without a second model. Stay with Power BI if your reporting is not dbt-based and your users need a visual designer, not code-defined metrics.

## Open-source options in detail

- **Metabase** (https://github.com/metabase/metabase): Licence: AGPL-3.0; Last release: 2026-11-06
- **Apache Superset** (https://github.com/apache/superset): Licence: Apache-2.0
- **Lightdash** (https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash): Licence: MIT

## Questions

### What is the best alternative to Power BI in 2027?
Tableau is the best overall Power BI alternative on this page ($15/user/mo billed yearly). For no cost, Julius has a free plan (Free daily credits, 2 GB RAM, Notebooks). To self-host, Metabase is open source (AGPL-3.0).

### Is there a free version of Power BI?
Yes. Power BI has a free plan: Free account; sharing needs Pro. Paid plans start at $14/user/mo billed yearly, checked on 11 Nov 2026.

### Is there a 100% free alternative to Power BI?
Yes. Metabase, Apache Superset, Lightdash are open source and free to self-host. Tableau, Hex, Julius have a free plan with limits, shown in the table.

### How much do Power BI alternatives cost for a team of 5?
If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 11 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is Tableau $75/mo, Julius $100/mo, ThoughtSpot $125/mo, against Power BI $70/mo for Power BI. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size.

### Which is better, Tableau or Power BI?
Tableau Standard starts at $15 per user per month on an annual contract only, with no monthly plan, and the free Desktop edition cannot publish or share workbooks online. Choose Tableau if you need Tableau's visual-analysis depth and can commit to an annual per-user contract. Stay with Power BI if you already live in Microsoft 365 and want monthly billing plus free report authoring in Desktop.

### Why are people leaving Power BI?
The documented reasons are: Microsoft announced new Power BI prices of $14 per user per month for Pro and $24 for Premium Per User, effective 1 April 2025, applying to existing customers at renewal, the first update in nearly 10 years (1 Apr 2025); The free Power BI account cannot share reports; the pricing page says to upgrade to Pro or Premium to share, so any team viewing reports needs paid per-user licences (11 Nov 2026). Each is sourced in the section above.

### What is better than Power BI?
It depends on the job. Tableau suits deeper visual analysis, Looker suits a governed modelling layer on Google Cloud, and ThoughtSpot suits plain-language questions. Power BI stays strongest for teams already built on Microsoft 365.

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Live table, team cost finder and price alerts: https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/power-bi/