Business Intelligence · ranked shortlist
Best Business Intelligence software for Startups in 2026
20 approved business intelligence listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.
- Tools ranked
- 20
- Entry price range
- $9.90-$2,500
- Publish a $0 plan
- 6 of 20
How this ranking is derived
The sort key
Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.
Where the ratings come from
No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.
What the pool is
Approved business intelligence listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the business intelligence category page.
The ranking
Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.
- #1
Anaplan
Highest rated hereConnected planning platform with an in-memory calculation engine for large multidimensional models
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- planning, Fpa, supply-chain, Workforce Planning
- #2
Board International
Unified planning, budgeting and BI on a single multidimensional model
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Epm, financial-planning, Fp And A, Supply Chain Planning
- #3
Cabin
Cookieless web analytics that also reports the carbon footprint of your website
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $14 a month.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $45.
- Billing
- Per month by pageview volume
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- Web Analytics, privacy, sustainability, cookieless
- #4
Cube
AI-native analytics platform with semantic layer and governed access
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $40 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $80 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Per-developer seats with volume pricing
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- analytics, Semantic Layer, ai-analytics, embedded
- #5
DashThis
Fixed-price marketing dashboards for agencies billed by dashboard, not by seat
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $44 a month, with no free plan.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $429.
- Billing
- Per month by dashboard count
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- Marketing Reporting, dashboards, agency, white-label
- #6
Deepnote
Collaborative cloud workspace for data analytics and machine learning
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $39 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- Subscription with free tier
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- data-analytics, data-science, machine-learning, Notebooks
- #7
Evidence
Business intelligence as code for teams and AI agents
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $2,500 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- Flat team pricing with no per-user fees
- Published tiers
- 2 tiers
- Tags
- analytics, business-intelligence, infrastructure-as-code, ai-analytics
- #8
Fabi
AI notebooks combining SQL, Python and no-code for small data teams
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $39 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $199 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Per user per month
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- Notebooks, ai-analytics, sql, Python
- #9
Hex
AI-powered analytics platform unifying notebooks, dashboards, and business intelligence
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $36 a month.
- 4 published tiers, topping out at $75 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Seat-based subscription with credit system
- Published tiers
- 4 tiers
- Tags
- analytics, business-intelligence, data, Notebooks
- #10
Jedox
Excel-native planning and OLAP modelling for finance teams that refuse to leave spreadsheets
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Epm, Fpanda, planning, olap
- #11
Luzmo
Embedded analytics for SaaS products, billed by monthly active dashboard users
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $995 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $2,495 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Per month by monthly active user count
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- Embedded Analytics, SaaS, dashboards, multi-tenant
- #12
NetBase Quid
Consumer and market intelligence combining social listening with unstructured text analytics
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- consumer-intelligence, social-listening, Text Analytics, market-research
- #13
Phocas
Pre-built BI and FP&A for wholesale distributors and manufacturers running mid-market ERPs
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- business-intelligence, distribution, manufacturing, Erp Reporting
- #14
Pigment
Enterprise business planning platform for finance, sales and workforce modelling
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Fpa, planning, Financial Modelling, Epm
- #15
Quid
Consumer and market intelligence combining social listening with unstructured text network analysis
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- market-intelligence, social-listening, consumer-insights, Text Analytics
- #16
Reportz
Per-dashboard marketing reporting at under ten dollars a client
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $9.90 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $742.50.
- Billing
- Per month by dashboard count
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- Marketing Reporting, dashboards, agency, white-label
- #17
Rill Data
Local-first BI on DuckDB and ClickHouse with dashboards defined as code
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $20 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $30 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Per user per month plus metered compute
- Published tiers
- 3 tiers
- Tags
- bi, Duckdb, Clickhouse, Analytics As Code
- #18
Snowplow
Behavioural data pipeline you run in your own cloud, relicensed away from Apache 2.0 in 2024
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- Behavioural Data, Event Tracking, Data Pipeline, analytics
- #19
Zebra BI
IBCS-based charting add-ins that replace native visuals in Power BI, Excel and PowerPoint
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $50 a month.
- 5 published tiers, topping out at $316 plus a tier sold by quote.
- Billing
- Per year by licensed user count
- Published tiers
- 5 tiers
- Tags
- Ibcs, Power Bi, Excel, Financial Reporting
- #20
Zenlytic
Conversational analytics on a governed semantic layer that shows you the SQL it ran
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
- Billing
- quote
- Published tiers
- 1 tier
- Tags
- ai-analytics, Semantic Layer, natural-language, business-intelligence
What business intelligence software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $9.90Reportz
- Median entry price
- $39across 11 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $2,500Evidence
- Publish a $0 plan
- 6of 20
Paid business intelligence plans in this set start anywhere from $9.90 a month for Reportz to $2,500 for Evidence. The median entry price across the 11 tools that publish one is $39, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
6 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and every one of those also sells a paid tier above it. 5 tools have no free tier of any kind.
17 of 20 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 20 business intelligence listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 9
- Per month by dashboard count
- 2
- Flat team pricing with no per-user fees
- 1
- Per month by monthly active user count
- 1
- Per month by pageview volume
- 1
- Per user per month
- 1
- Per user per month plus metered compute
- 1
- Per year by licensed user count
- 1
- Per-developer seats with volume pricing
- 1
- Seat-based subscription with credit system
- 1
- Subscription with free tier
- 1
Separately, 17 of 20 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 18 business intelligence tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Priority support , 4 of 18
- Unlimited users , 3 of 18
- Audit logs , 2 of 18
- Billed annually , 2 of 18
- Custom domain , 2 of 18
Named by fewer
- Dedicated success manager , 2 of 18
- White labelling , 2 of 18
Named by exactly one vendor: Account management, Cloud or self-managed deployment, Extended credits, No published rate card, SAML and custom identity providers, Three projects. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Business Intelligence” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 20 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- dashboards6
- ai-analytics4
- analytics4
- business-intelligence4
- Epm3
- Notebooks3
- planning3
- agency2
- budgeting2
- Excel2
- Fpa2
- Fpanda2
Carried by a single tool: Analytics As Code, consumer-insights, data-analytics, Enterprise, forecasting, manufacturing, PPC, Supply Chain Planning. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
6 of 20 business intelligence tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with priority support, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$9.90 to $2,500 is a $2,490.10 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $2,500 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
10 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2.5 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, priority support, unlimited users, audit logs, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 11 billing models: quote on 9 listings, Per month by dashboard count on 2, and 9 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare business intelligence tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Anaplan vs Board International
- Board International vs Cabin
- Cabin vs Cube
- Cube vs DashThis
- DashThis vs Deepnote
- Deepnote vs Evidence
- Evidence vs Fabi
- Fabi vs Hex
Go straight to the numbers
- Anaplanpricingalternatives
- Board Internationalpricingalternatives
- Cabinpricingalternatives
- Cubepricingalternatives
- DashThispricingalternatives
- Deepnotepricingalternatives
Questions people ask about business intelligence software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How is this business intelligence ranking decided?
- Mechanically. The 20 approved business intelligence listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
- Is this list re-ordered for startups?
- No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the startups framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.
- How much does business intelligence software cost?
- Across the 20 business intelligence tools listed here, paid plans start between $9.90 and $2,500 a month, with a median entry price of $39. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $2,500 a month (Evidence). 6 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest business intelligence software?
- Among the ones that charge, Reportz has the lowest published entry price at $9.90 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free business intelligence software?
- Yes, 6 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. Each of those also sells paid tiers above the free plan. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should business intelligence software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are priority support (4 of 18 tools that publish plan detail), unlimited users (3) and audit logs (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as account management or cloud or self-managed deployment, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is business intelligence software usually billed?
- quote (9), Per month by dashboard count (2), Flat team pricing with no per-user fees (1), Per month by monthly active user count (1), plus 7 less common arrangements, counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 17 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does business intelligence software actually cover?
- The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are dashboards (6), ai-analytics (4), analytics (4), business-intelligence (4), epm (3). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under business intelligence may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do business intelligence tools offer?
- 20 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2.5 tiers. 10 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many business intelligence tools are listed on Softwr?
- 20 approved business intelligence listings appear on this page, including Anaplan, Board International, Cabin, Cube. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/business-intelligence, which ranks the same set by published rating.