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Business Intelligence · head to head

Rill Data vs Snowplow

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
Snowplow logo

Snowplow

Business Intelligence

Behavioural data pipeline you run in your own cloud, relicensed away from Apache 2.0 in 2024

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Snowplow the core pipeline was relicensed from Apache 2.0 on 8 January 2024 to the Snowplow Limited Use Licence Agreement and a Confluent-derived community licence, so organisations that adopted it as permissively licensed software must now review their entitlement, buy a licence, or migrate.
  • They diverge on capability: Rill Data covers Local development, Snowplow covers Own-cloud deployment.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Rill Data and Snowplow differ
AttributeRill DataSnowplow
Starting price$20/monthOn request
Pricing modelPer user per month plus metered computequote
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsLinux, Web, Docker

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 Rill Data

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

Only in Snowplow

  • Own-cloud deployment
  • Schema enforcement
  • Warehouse loading
  • Enrichment
  • Trackers
  • Streaming output
  • Data models
  • Snowplow BDP

What people use each for

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

Rill Data

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

Snowplow

  • A data team that needs full-fidelity event data in its own warehouse to build attribution or machine learning features rather than to populate dashboardsnot Rill Data
  • A regulated business that cannot send behavioural data to a third-party analytics vendor and must keep collection inside its own cloud accountnot Rill Data
  • A product organisation tired of silently malformed events, which wants a schema contract enforced at collection timenot Rill Data
  • A company modelling customer behaviour across web, mobile and server events that needs them in one consistent structurenot Rill Data

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Snowplow

  • The core pipeline was relicensed from Apache 2.0 on 8 January 2024 to the Snowplow Limited Use Licence Agreement and a Confluent-derived community licence, so organisations that adopted it as permissively licensed software must now review their entitlement, buy a licence, or migrate.
  • You run the pipeline in your own cloud, which means the infrastructure bill, the on-call rota and the upgrade work are yours, and at high event volume that operational cost frequently exceeds what a hosted product would have charged.
  • Schema enforcement is the main benefit and the main friction, because every new event requires a schema to be authored and versioned, and teams without discipline around that end up blocked on their own governance process.
  • There is no analysis layer: Snowplow delivers data to your warehouse and nothing else, so you still need modelling, a BI tool and the people to run them before anyone sees a number.
  • The licence change fractured the community, spawning an Apache 2.0 fork, which means community contributions and third-party tooling are now split across two codebases with uncertain long-term maintenance.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Snowplow

On request
  • Snowplow BDP$undefined/year
    • Commercial pricing quoted by event volume and deployment
    • Core pipeline components under the Snowplow Limited Use Licence Agreement, not Apache 2.0
    • Trackers, analytics SDKs and Iglu SDKs remain Apache 2.0

Which should you pick?

Choose Rill Data if

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

Choose Snowplow if

  • You need own-cloud deployment.
  • You work on Linux, Web, Docker.
  • You also want schema enforcement.
Snowplow review

Questions people ask

Is Rill Data or Snowplow better?
Neither clearly leads. Rill Data starts at $20/month and Snowplow at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Rill Data or Snowplow?
Rill Data starts at $20/month and Snowplow at On request.
Does Rill Data or Snowplow run on more platforms?
Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Snowplow runs on Linux, Web, Docker.
What is Rill Data best used for?
Rill Data is most often used for an analytics team that wants dashboard changes to go through code review rather than being edited in a web ui, interactive exploration of event-scale data where a warehouse round trip per filter click is too slow, embedding fast slice-and-dice dashboards into a product where the underlying store is already clickhouse or druid, a data engineer prototyping a metrics layer locally on a laptop before committing to any cloud spend. Of those, an analytics team that wants dashboard changes to go through code review rather than being edited in a web ui and interactive exploration of event-scale data where a warehouse round trip per filter click is too slow are not what Snowplow is typically brought in for.
What can Rill Data do that Snowplow cannot?
Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database. Snowplow covers Own-cloud deployment, Schema enforcement, Warehouse loading, Enrichment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Rill Data: Is Rill open source?

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

Snowplow: Is Snowplow still open source?

Not in the permissive sense. On 8 January 2024 the core pipeline moved from Apache 2.0 to the Snowplow Limited Use Licence Agreement, with version 1.1 following in December 2024, alongside a community licence based on the Confluent Community Licence. Trackers and analytics SDKs remain Apache 2.0.

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.

Snowplow: Can we still run it for free in production?

Free use of the relicensed core components is materially constrained and commercial use generally requires an agreement. Read the current licence text against your intended use rather than relying on older documentation.

Rill Data: Can business users build dashboards?

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

Snowplow: Is there an Apache 2.0 alternative?

Yes, a fork called OpenSnowcat was created in response to the relicensing and continues under Apache 2.0.

Rill Data: Which databases can back a deployed project?

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

Snowplow: What does Snowplow BDP cost?

Not published. It is quoted by event volume and deployment, and your own cloud infrastructure costs are separate and additional.

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