Evidence

What is Evidence?

Evidence is an open source business intelligence tool that turns SQL queries and Markdown into an interactive data website. Instead of building dashboards in a drag-and-drop editor, you write .md files that mix prose, SQL, and chart components, and Evidence compiles them into a fast static site you version-control in Git.

What is Evidence best for?

Evidence is best for analytics engineers and data teams who already live in SQL and Git and want reports that are reviewable, diffable, and reproducible — not clicked together by hand. It shines for polished, narrative reports and internal data products where you want templated pages generated from your data warehouse.

What can Evidence do?

• Write reports as Markdown files that combine text, SQL queries, and chart components
• Render charts, tables, maps, heatmaps, and custom Svelte components from query results
• Connect to Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, DuckDB/MotherDuck, and more
• Query flat files (CSV, Parquet, Excel) and object storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob, R2) directly
• Generate templated pages — one report definition renders a page per customer, region, or product
• Build locally with the CLI and deploy the output as a static site anywhere
• Version-control everything in Git with branch previews and rollback

Where does Evidence fall short?

• It’s code-first by design, so it’s a poor fit for non-technical business users who expect a point-and-click dashboard builder — those people won’t author reports in SQL and Markdown.
• The free open source core is a static site generator: interactivity is limited to what compiles into the page, so live drill-down and ad-hoc self-serve exploration are weaker than in Tableau or Looker.
• Governance, access control, and collaboration features (row-level and page-level permissions, SSO, scheduled delivery, the analytics agent) live in the paid Evidence Cloud, not the MIT core.

Is Evidence free?

Yes — Evidence Core is free and open source under the MIT license, and you can self-host the generated site at no cost. Evidence Cloud is the paid, hosted platform: the Team plan is $2,500/month for unlimited users, and Enterprise (SSO, row-level access, embedding, on-prem) is custom-priced.

What does Evidence replace?

Evidence is a code-based alternative to Tableau, Looker, and Power BI. It covers the same job — turning warehouse data into shareable reports and dashboards — but you author in SQL and Markdown and ship a version-controlled site instead of building visuals in a proprietary GUI.

FAQ

Is Evidence open source? Yes. Evidence Core is released under the MIT license, one of the most permissive open source licenses. The paid Evidence Cloud adds hosting, governance, and AI features on top.

Can I self-host Evidence for free? Yes. Evidence builds a static site you can deploy to any host — Netlify, Vercel, S3, your own server — for free. You only pay if you opt into Evidence Cloud.

Is Evidence a good Tableau or Power BI alternative? For SQL-fluent teams that want reviewable, Git-tracked reports, yes. If your users need self-serve, click-to-explore dashboards without writing code, a traditional BI tool is a better fit.

What do I need to run Evidence? Node.js and a SQL data source (or flat files). You write reports in Markdown, run the Evidence CLI to build the site, and deploy the static output wherever you host web pages.