Is Phocas or Rill Data better?

Neither clearly leads. Phocas starts at On request and Rill Data at $20/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Phocas or Rill Data?

Phocas starts at On request and Rill Data at $20/month.

Does Phocas or Rill Data run on more platforms?

Phocas runs on Web, iOS, Android. Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.

What is Phocas best used for?

Phocas is most often used for a wholesale distributor on prophet 21 whose sales reps need per-customer margin and stock availability without waiting on a report writer, a manufacturer that wants budgeting on the same data as its sales analysis rather than in a separate spreadsheet, a multi-branch retailer comparing branch and product performance daily without an internal bi team, a private equity owner standardising reporting across several acquired distributors on different erps. Of those, a wholesale distributor on prophet 21 whose sales reps need per-customer margin and stock availability without waiting on a report writer and a manufacturer that wants budgeting on the same data as its sales analysis rather than in a separate spreadsheet are not what Rill Data is typically brought in for.

What can Phocas do that Rill Data cannot?

Phocas covers ERP connectors, Pre-built distribution content, Grid-first analysis, Financial statements. Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database.

Business Intelligence · head to head

Phocas vs Rill Data

Phocas

Business Intelligence

Pre-built BI and FP&A for wholesale distributors and manufacturers running mid-market ERPs

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

Rill Data

Business Intelligence

Local-first BI on DuckDB and ClickHouse with dashboards defined as code

From: $20/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Phocas the value is the pre-built vertical content, so a company outside distribution, manufacturing or retail pays premium prices for dashboards it must build itself anyway.; Rill Data the seat price of 20 dollars is misleading as a budget figure: Rill’s own calculator puts a small two-seat project at around 256 dollars a month, with compute making up the great majority.
They diverge on capability: Phocas covers ERP connectors, Rill Data covers Local development.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Phocas and Rill Data actually diverge.

Attributes where Phocas and Rill Data differ
Attribute	Phocas	Rill Data
Starting price	On request	$20/month
Pricing model	quote	Per user per month plus metered compute
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	Web, Linux, macOS, Windows

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Business Intelligence).

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 Phocas

ERP connectors
Pre-built distribution content
Grid-first analysis
Financial statements
Budgets and forecasts
Rebates module
Alerts and subscriptions
Mobile apps

Only in Rill Data

Local development
Dashboards as code
Embedded DuckDB
Bring your own database
Alerts and scheduled reports
Embedded analytics

What people use each for

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

Phocas

A wholesale distributor on Prophet 21 whose sales reps need per-customer margin and stock availability without waiting on a report writernot Rill Data
A manufacturer that wants budgeting on the same data as its sales analysis rather than in a separate spreadsheetnot Rill Data
A multi-branch retailer comparing branch and product performance daily without an internal BI teamnot Rill Data
A private equity owner standardising reporting across several acquired distributors on different ERPsnot Rill Data

Rill Data

An analytics team that wants dashboard changes to go through code review rather than being edited in a web UInot Phocas
Interactive exploration of event-scale data where a warehouse round trip per filter click is too slownot Phocas
Embedding fast slice-and-dice dashboards into a product where the underlying store is already ClickHouse or Druidnot Phocas
A data engineer prototyping a metrics layer locally on a laptop before committing to any cloud spendnot Phocas

Where each one falls short

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

Phocas

The value is the pre-built vertical content, so a company outside distribution, manufacturing or retail pays premium prices for dashboards it must build itself anyway.
If your ERP is not on the maintained connector list you fall back to generic database extraction and lose the fast time to value that justifies the price.
The visualisation library is thin next to Power BI or Tableau, and analysts who want fine control over chart design will find it constraining.
Pricing is quoted per user and never published, and buyers routinely report large gaps between initial and renewal quotes with limited comparison leverage.
Modules are licensed separately, so a customer who bought Analytics and later wants Financial Statements or Rebates faces a new negotiation rather than an upgrade.

Rill Data

The seat price of 20 dollars is misleading as a budget figure: Rill’s own calculator puts a small two-seat project at around 256 dollars a month, with compute making up the great majority.
Dashboards are defined in YAML and SQL, so business users cannot create or change one without a developer and a Git workflow, which stalls self-service adoption.
It is built for the explore-a-metric pattern and does not produce pixel-perfect financial or operational reports, so most organisations still need a second reporting tool.
AI tokens and API calls are quota-limited per seat, with API overage at a cent per call, so programmatic consumers can create an unbudgeted line item.
As a smaller vendor competing against Looker, Tableau and Power BI, the ecosystem of consultants, templates and trained analysts is thin, which raises the cost of hiring for it.

Pricing, plan by plan

Phocas

On request

Phocas$undefined/year
- Annual subscription quoted by user count and modules
- Analytics, Financial Statements, Budgets and Rebates licensed separately
- One-off implementation and ERP connector setup fee

Rill Data

$20/month

Starter$20/month
- Per seat, up to twenty seats
- Three projects
- Compute at 0.15 USD per compute unit hour
Growth$30/month
- Per seat, up to one hundred seats
- Ten projects
- Compute at 0.20 USD per compute unit hour
Enterprise$undefined/year
- Annual platform licence with negotiated capacity
- Unlimited seats and projects
- Dedicated infrastructure

Which should you pick?

Choose Phocas if

You need erp connectors.
You work on Web, iOS, Android.
You also want pre-built distribution content.

Phocas review

Choose Rill Data if

You need local development.
You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
You also want dashboards as code.

Rill Data review

Questions people ask

Is Phocas or Rill Data better?: Neither clearly leads. Phocas starts at On request and Rill Data at $20/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Phocas or Rill Data?: Phocas starts at On request and Rill Data at $20/month.
Does Phocas or Rill Data run on more platforms?: Phocas runs on Web, iOS, Android. Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
What is Phocas best used for?: Phocas is most often used for a wholesale distributor on prophet 21 whose sales reps need per-customer margin and stock availability without waiting on a report writer, a manufacturer that wants budgeting on the same data as its sales analysis rather than in a separate spreadsheet, a multi-branch retailer comparing branch and product performance daily without an internal bi team, a private equity owner standardising reporting across several acquired distributors on different erps. Of those, a wholesale distributor on prophet 21 whose sales reps need per-customer margin and stock availability without waiting on a report writer and a manufacturer that wants budgeting on the same data as its sales analysis rather than in a separate spreadsheet are not what Rill Data is typically brought in for.
What can Phocas do that Rill Data cannot?: Phocas covers ERP connectors, Pre-built distribution content, Grid-first analysis, Financial statements. Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Phocas: What does Phocas cost?

Nothing is published. It is quoted annually by user count and module, with a separate implementation fee, and varies by region.

Rill Data: Is Rill open source?

The Rill developer binary is open source and free to run locally; Rill Cloud is the paid product.

Phocas: Is it worth it over Power BI?

Only if you are in its target verticals on a supported ERP. Power BI is far cheaper per seat but you supply the data model.

Rill Data: How much does it actually cost?

Seats start at 20 USD per month, but hosted compute at 0.15 USD per compute unit hour typically dominates the bill. Bringing your own database removes the usage fee.

Phocas: Does it replace my ERP reporting?

It replaces day-to-day analysis and sales reporting. Transactional and statutory reporting stays in the ERP.

Rill Data: Can business users build dashboards?

Not directly. Dashboards are YAML and SQL under version control.

Phocas: Can it do budgeting?

Yes, through a separately licensed Financial Statements and Budgets module on the same warehouse.

Rill Data: Which databases can back a deployed project?

DuckDB, ClickHouse, Druid, Pinot, Snowflake and others.

Phocas vs Rill Data

Phocas

Rill Data

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Phocas

Only in Rill Data

What people use each for

Phocas

Rill Data

Where each one falls short

Phocas

Rill Data

Pricing, plan by plan

Phocas

Rill Data

Which should you pick?

Choose Phocas if

Choose Rill Data if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Phocas

More on Rill Data

Keep looking

Other head to heads