Softwr

Business Intelligence · head to head

Luzmo vs Steampipe

Luzmo logo

Luzmo

Business Intelligence

Embedded analytics for SaaS products, billed by monthly active dashboard users

From
€995/month
Free plan
No
Visit LuzmoFull review
Steampipe logo

Steampipe

Developer Tools

Query cloud APIs, SaaS tools and code with SQL, with no extract or load step

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit SteampipeFull review

The short version

  • Steampipe has a free plan, then $49/mo; Luzmo starts at €995/mo.
  • Only Luzmo lists multi-tenant row-level security; only Steampipe lists wide plugin set.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Luzmo and Steampipe actually diverge.

Attributes where Luzmo and Steampipe differ
AttributeLuzmoSteampipe
Starting price€995/monthFree
Pricing modelPer month by monthly active user countOpen source, with paid hosting through Turbot Pipes
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWebmacOS, Linux, Windows, Self-hosted, Web
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceDeveloper Tools

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Luzmo

  • Multi-tenant row-level security
  • Embeddable editor
  • Theming and white labelling
  • SDKs and APIs
  • Luzmo IQ
  • Scheduled exports

Only in Steampipe

  • SQL over live APIs
  • Wide plugin set
  • Embedded Postgres
  • Compliance benchmarks
  • Joins across providers
  • Hosted option

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Luzmo

  • A B2B SaaS product that needs customer-facing dashboards without hiring a front-end data visualisation teamnot Steampipe
  • A vertical software vendor that wants to sell an analytics module as a paid add-onnot Steampipe
  • A product where each customer must only see their own rows and the security boundary has to be provable to an auditornot Steampipe
  • A team that wants end customers to build their own charts rather than filing feature requests for every new reportnot Steampipe

Steampipe

  • Security teams answering posture questions against live cloud accounts rather than a nightly exportnot Luzmo
  • Compliance evidence gathering where the answer must reflect the account at the moment it is askednot Luzmo
  • Inventory and drift questions spanning several cloud providers in one querynot Luzmo
  • Engineers who would rather write SQL than learn each provider command line toolnot Luzmo

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Luzmo

  • Billing by monthly active users means commercial success is punished: getting every one of your customers into the dashboard weekly is exactly the outcome that pushes you into the next tier
  • The entry price of EUR 995 per month billed annually rules it out for early-stage products, so the realistic buyer already has meaningful revenue
  • It is built for embedding rather than internal analysis, so most customers still pay for a second BI tool for their own staff, doubling the analytics line item
  • The semantic modelling layer is lighter than a dedicated one such as dbt or Cube, so complex metric definitions often have to be pre-computed in the warehouse before Luzmo sees them
  • As a smaller European vendor it has less connector breadth and a smaller partner ecosystem than the US incumbents, and unusual data sources frequently need an intermediate warehouse hop

Steampipe

  • AGPL-3.0 across all four engines is a procurement blocker at organisations that ban the licence outright, and the network clause reaches any internal portal or service that puts a web interface in front of it
  • Dashboards, benchmarks and mods were removed from Steampipe entirely at version 1.0 in October 2024 and now live in a separate product, so pre-2024 documentation and tutorials describe commands that no longer exist
  • Live querying is bound by cloud provider API rate limits and keeps no persistent store by default, which is why a separate DuckDB-backed product exists for log volumes and why large accounts return slowly
  • The company is fifteen people and bootstrapped, maintaining four command line tools plus a hosted service plus two further products, and the newer tools have thin community traction relative to that surface area
  • Hosted tiers include only three users regardless of tier, with additional Enterprise users charged separately, so a team of thirty costs an order of magnitude more than the headline figure before compute and storage are counted

Pricing, plan by plan

Luzmo

€995/month
  • Starter€995/mo
    • Embedded dashboards with white labelling
    • Custom charts
    • APIs and SDKs
  • Premium€2,495/mo
    • Everything in Starter
    • End-customer self-service dashboard building
    • Luzmo IQ conversational insights
  • EnterpriseOn request
    • Dedicated VPC option
    • Flexible hosting region
    • OIDC single sign-on

Steampipe

Free
  • Steampipe CLIFree
    • AGPL-3.0
    • All plugins
    • No user or query limits
  • Pipes DeveloperFree
    • One user
    • 400 compute minutes
    • 3GB storage
  • Pipes Team$49/mo
    • Three users
    • 2,000 compute minutes
    • 20GB storage
  • Pipes Enterprise$249/mo
    • Three users
    • 10,000 compute minutes
    • 100GB storage

Which should you pick?

Choose Luzmo if

  • You need multi-tenant row-level security.
  • You also want embeddable editor.
Luzmo review

Choose Steampipe if

  • You need sql over live apis.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on macOS, Linux, Windows, Self-hosted, Web.
  • You also want wide plugin set.
Steampipe review

Questions people ask

Is Luzmo or Steampipe better?
Neither clearly leads. Luzmo starts at €995/month and Steampipe at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Luzmo or Steampipe?
Steampipe has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at €995/month for Luzmo and Free for Steampipe.
Does Luzmo or Steampipe run on more platforms?
Luzmo runs on Web. Steampipe runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Self-hosted, Web.
Can I use Steampipe for free?
Yes. Steampipe has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Luzmo starts at €995/month.
What is Luzmo best used for?
Luzmo is most often used for a b2b saas product that needs customer-facing dashboards without hiring a front-end data visualisation team, a vertical software vendor that wants to sell an analytics module as a paid add-on, a product where each customer must only see their own rows and the security boundary has to be provable to an auditor, a team that wants end customers to build their own charts rather than filing feature requests for every new report. Of those, a b2b saas product that needs customer-facing dashboards without hiring a front-end data visualisation team and a vertical software vendor that wants to sell an analytics module as a paid add-on are not what Steampipe is typically brought in for.
What can Luzmo do that Steampipe cannot?
Luzmo covers Multi-tenant row-level security, Embeddable editor, Theming and white labelling, SDKs and APIs. Steampipe covers SQL over live APIs, Wide plugin set, Embedded Postgres, Compliance benchmarks.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Luzmo: Is Luzmo the same as Cumul.io?

Yes. Cumul.io rebranded to Luzmo; it is the same company and product line.

Steampipe: When did Steampipe become AGPL?

May 2021, about four months after the project went public. It is a settled licence rather than a recent change, and predates the Business Source Licence wave it is often confused with.

Luzmo: How is it priced?

By monthly active users of your embedded dashboards, from EUR 995 per month on Starter billed annually.

Steampipe: Where did the dashboards and benchmarks go?

Into Powerpipe. They were deprecated in March 2024 and removed from Steampipe at version 1.0 in October 2024, so the check, dashboard, mod and variable commands are gone.

Luzmo: Is there a free tier?

No, only a trial. There is no perpetual free plan.

Steampipe: Is it fast on a large cloud estate?

Not always. Queries call provider APIs at request time, so rate limits rather than query planning set the pace, and there is no persistent store by default.

Luzmo: Can our customers build their own dashboards?

Yes, but the embeddable editor for end-customer self-service sits on the Premium tier.

Steampipe: Does the AGPL affect internal use?

Running it internally for your own analysis is fine. Putting a web interface in front of it that other people use is where the network clause becomes a question for your legal team.

Steampipe: Is a bootstrapped vendor a risk?

It cuts both ways. There is no investor pressure toward a licence change or an exit, and there are also fifteen people supporting a large product surface.

Share

Related pages

More on Luzmo

More on Steampipe

Keep looking

Other head to heads