Softwr

Business Intelligence · head to head

Pigment vs Rill Data

Pigment logo

Pigment

Business Intelligence

Enterprise business planning platform for finance, sales and workforce modelling

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Rill Data logo

Rill Data

Business Intelligence

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

From
$20/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Pigment no pricing is published and the structure has three moving parts, platform fee, use-case fees and tiered seats, so two companies of the same size can pay very different amounts and neither can benchmark the other.; 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: Pigment covers Dimensional modelling, Rill Data covers Local development.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Pigment and Rill Data differ
AttributePigmentRill Data
Starting priceOn request$20/month
Pricing modelquotePer user per month plus metered compute
PlatformsWebWeb, 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 Pigment

  • Dimensional modelling
  • Scenario planning
  • Data connectors
  • Application blocks
  • Reporting and boards
  • Access control
  • Audit trail
  • AI assistance

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.

Pigment

  • A finance team retiring a fragile Excel consolidation that no one can audit and only one person can runnot Rill Data
  • Sales operations modelling quota, territory and headcount capacity against a revenue plan in the same system finance usesnot Rill Data
  • A company that needs monthly re-forecasting fast enough to run scenarios live in the leadership meetingnot Rill Data
  • Replacing an ageing Anaplan estate where the model has become unmaintainable and per-workspace costs have crept upnot Rill Data

Rill Data

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

Where each one falls short

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

Pigment

  • No pricing is published and the structure has three moving parts, platform fee, use-case fees and tiered seats, so two companies of the same size can pay very different amounts and neither can benchmark the other.
  • Cost scales with planning processes rather than with company size, so a successful first deployment creates internal demand that directly increases the bill at renewal.
  • It requires a modelling owner. Without a person who understands dimensional design, teams rebuild spreadsheet patterns in Pigment and inherit all the maintenance problems they were trying to escape.
  • Implementation is partner-led and measured in months, so the payback horizon is long compared with lighter FP&A tools that a controller can configure alone.
  • The connector library covers major systems well but the long tail is thinner than the incumbents, and industry-specific source systems often need a warehouse or a file drop in between.

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

Pigment

On request
  • Pigment platform$undefined/year
    • Platform fee plus per use-case fees
    • Licences tiered as editor, contributor and explorer
    • No free tier and no self-service signup

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 Pigment if

  • You need dimensional modelling.
  • You also want scenario planning.
Pigment 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 Pigment or Rill Data better?
Neither clearly leads. Pigment 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, Pigment or Rill Data?
Pigment starts at On request and Rill Data at $20/month.
Does Pigment or Rill Data run on more platforms?
Pigment runs on Web. Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
What is Pigment best used for?
Pigment is most often used for a finance team retiring a fragile excel consolidation that no one can audit and only one person can run, sales operations modelling quota, territory and headcount capacity against a revenue plan in the same system finance uses, a company that needs monthly re-forecasting fast enough to run scenarios live in the leadership meeting, replacing an ageing anaplan estate where the model has become unmaintainable and per-workspace costs have crept up. Of those, a finance team retiring a fragile excel consolidation that no one can audit and only one person can run and sales operations modelling quota, territory and headcount capacity against a revenue plan in the same system finance uses are not what Rill Data is typically brought in for.
What can Pigment do that Rill Data cannot?
Pigment covers Dimensional modelling, Scenario planning, Data connectors, Application blocks. Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Pigment: Does Pigment publish prices?

No. Expect a quote combining a platform fee, fees per planning use case, and seat licences split into editor, contributor and explorer tiers.

Rill Data: Is Rill open source?

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

Pigment: Is Pigment an alternative to Anaplan?

It is positioned directly against Anaplan and much of its customer base is migrating from it, mainly citing modelling readability and recalculation speed.

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.

Pigment: Can we use it without consultants?

In practice most deployments use Pigment or a partner for the initial build. Ongoing model changes can be handled in-house once someone owns the modelling discipline.

Rill Data: Can business users build dashboards?

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

Pigment: Where is data hosted?

Pigment is a European vendor with regional hosting options, which is often the deciding factor for EU buyers with data residency requirements.

Rill Data: Which databases can back a deployed project?

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

Share

Related pages

More on Pigment

More on Rill Data

Keep looking

Other head to heads