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Business Intelligence · head to head

Rill Data vs Tilt

Rill Data logo

Rill Data

Business Intelligence

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

From
$20/month
Free plan
No
Visit Rill DataFull review
Tilt logo

Tilt

Developer Tools

Local Kubernetes development loop that rebuilds and live-updates containers on save

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit TiltFull review

The short version

  • Tilt is free; Rill Data starts at $20/mo.
  • Only Rill Data lists embedded DuckDB; only Tilt lists live update.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Rill Data and Tilt differ
AttributeRill DataTilt
Starting price$20/monthFree
Pricing modelPer user per month plus metered computeOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsLinux, macOS, Windows
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 Rill Data

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

Only in Tilt

  • Live update
  • Tiltfile as code
  • Unified web UI
  • Selective rebuilds
  • Local and remote clusters
  • Resource dependencies
  • Extensions registry
  • Custom buttons and triggers

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 Tilt
  • Interactive exploration of event-scale data where a warehouse round trip per filter click is too slownot Tilt
  • Embedding fast slice-and-dice dashboards into a product where the underlying store is already ClickHouse or Druidnot Tilt
  • A data engineer prototyping a metrics layer locally on a laptop before committing to any cloud spendnot Tilt

Tilt

  • A team of ten or more engineers whose application is fifteen microservices on Kubernetes and who currently wait on CI to test a changenot Rill Data
  • An organisation onboarding new developers who want a single command that stands up the whole stack from a committed Tiltfilenot Rill Data
  • A platform team giving product engineers a consistent local environment against a shared remote development clusternot Rill Data
  • A codebase where one repository contains several services and rebuilding all of them on every edit is the main source of lost timenot 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

Tilt

  • Docker acquired Tilt in 2022 and the team now splits its time across Compose and Docker Desktop, so feature velocity is modest and the product's long-term priority inside Docker is not guaranteed; treat it as a stable utility, not a growing platform
  • The Tiltfile is Starlark, a Python dialect, so non-trivial setups become real programs that need reviewing and maintaining, and the person who wrote yours becomes a single point of failure
  • Live update only works when the running container can accept synced files and restart the process; compiled languages, distroless images and read-only filesystems often force you back to a full image rebuild, which removes the main benefit
  • It assumes Kubernetes. If your development target is plain Docker Compose or serverless functions, Tilt adds a cluster you did not need and a layer of abstraction with no payoff
  • There is no commercial support contract, no SLA and no paid tier, so when a Kubernetes version upgrade breaks something you are dependent on GitHub issues and a Slack channel rather than a vendor you can escalate to

Pricing, plan by plan

Rill Data

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

Tilt

Free
  • TiltFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed
    • All features, no paid tier
    • Community support via the Kubernetes Slack #tilt channel

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 Tilt if

  • You need live update.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want tiltfile as code.
Tilt review

Questions people ask

Is Rill Data or Tilt better?
Neither clearly leads. Rill Data starts at $20/month and Tilt at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Rill Data or Tilt?
Tilt has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $20/month for Rill Data and Free for Tilt.
Does Rill Data or Tilt run on more platforms?
Rill Data runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Tilt runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Tilt for free?
Yes. Tilt has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Rill Data starts at $20/month.
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 Tilt is typically brought in for.
What can Rill Data do that Tilt cannot?
Rill Data covers Local development, Dashboards as code, Embedded DuckDB, Bring your own database. Tilt covers Live update, Tiltfile as code, Unified web UI, Selective rebuilds.

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.

Tilt: Is Tilt free?

Yes, entirely. It is Apache 2.0 open source with no paid tier and no licence fee.

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.

Tilt: Who owns Tilt now?

Docker, which acquired it in May 2022. It remains open source and the repository is still actively maintained.

Rill Data: Can business users build dashboards?

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

Tilt: Do I need a remote cluster?

No. It works against a local cluster such as kind, minikube or Docker Desktop, and also against a shared remote development cluster if your services are too heavy to run locally.

Rill Data: Which databases can back a deployed project?

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

Tilt: How is it different from Skaffold?

Both automate the build-deploy loop. Tilt puts more weight on the live-update path and a multi-service dashboard; Skaffold is more configuration-driven and closer to Google's tooling.

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