Redash

What is Redash?

Redash is an open source business intelligence tool built around a browser-based SQL editor. You write a query against a connected data source, turn the results into a chart, and pin those charts to shareable dashboards. It connects to 35+ SQL, NoSQL, and API sources and runs entirely on your own infrastructure.

What is Redash best for?

Redash fits teams whose analysts and engineers are comfortable writing SQL and want a lightweight, self-hosted way to share query results as dashboards. It’s a strong fit for querying a warehouse like Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift and giving the rest of the company read-only dashboards, without paying per-seat for Tableau or Looker.

What can Redash do?

• Query 35+ data sources — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Databricks, Elasticsearch, and many more, including generic API and CSV/JSON sources.
• SQL editor with a schema browser, autocomplete, and reusable query snippets.
• Visualizations — line, bar, pivot, cohort, funnel, sunburst, boxplot, map, and counter charts built from any query result.
• Dashboards that combine visualizations from multiple queries and data sources on one page.
• Query results as a data source — run new SQL against the cached output of earlier queries to join across systems.
• Scheduled refreshes and alerts that re-run queries and notify Slack, email, or webhooks when a value crosses a threshold.
• Sharing and access control via user groups, plus a REST API for automation.

Where does Redash fall short?

Redash is SQL-first with no drag-and-drop query builder or semantic modeling layer. Non-technical users can read dashboards but generally can’t build their own without writing SQL — unlike Metabase, Tableau, or Power BI, which offer point-and-click query builders.

Its visualizations and dashboard interactivity are basic next to enterprise BI. There’s limited cross-filtering, a smaller chart library, and no governed metrics layer like Looker’s LookML, so consistent company-wide definitions are on you to enforce.

There is also no official hosted version. Databricks acquired Redash in 2021 and shut down the managed cloud in November 2021, so self-hosting is the only supported path today; enterprise niceties like native SCIM provisioning are absent.

Is Redash free?

Yes — Redash is fully free and open source under the permissive BSD-2-Clause license, with no paid tiers or feature gating. Every feature is in the self-hosted product. Your only costs are the infrastructure you run it on, typically a small server plus a Postgres and Redis instance.

What does Redash replace?

Redash is a self-hosted, SQL-centric stand-in for paid analytics suites. It’s most often used as an open source alternative to Tableau, Looker, Power BI, and Mode for teams that mainly need to query data and publish dashboards rather than build heavy governed data models.

FAQ

Is Redash open source? Yes. Redash is licensed under BSD-2-Clause, a permissive open source license, and developed in the open on GitHub. It moved to calendar-versioned releases and remains actively maintained, with v26 shipping in 2026.

Can I self-host Redash for free? Yes. Self-hosting is the only option and it’s completely free — there are no paid editions. Docker Compose is the standard setup; you cover only your own hosting.

Is Redash a good Tableau or Looker alternative? For SQL-fluent teams, yes — it covers querying, charts, dashboards, and alerts at zero license cost. If you need drag-and-drop authoring for non-technical users or a governed semantic layer, Metabase or Apache Superset may fit better.

What do I need to run Redash? A server (or container host) running the Redash app plus a PostgreSQL database and a Redis instance for its query queue. Docker Compose bundles these, so a small VM is enough to start.