Redash

Redash is an open-source, SQL-driven business intelligence tool that lets data teams query many data sources, visualize the results, build dashboards, and set up alerts — all through a lightweight web interface. Analysts write SQL against connected databases and warehouses, turn queries into charts, assemble dashboards for stakeholders, and share results, making data accessible without heavy BI infrastructure. Its simplicity and open-source model made it popular with engineering-led teams that want query-based analytics they can self-host and control.

The platform focuses on SQL-first exploration and sharing. It connects to dozens of sources (PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, and more), offers a query editor with schema browsing and query snippets, and supports scheduled query refreshes, alerts on results, and API access. Dashboards combine visualizations from multiple queries, and permissions control sharing. Redash was acquired by Databricks in 2020; the hosted Redash Cloud service was subsequently sunset, so today the primary path is the free self-hosted open-source version (or migrating to Databricks SQL), with third-party managed hosting available.

Redash serves data and engineering teams that want free, SQL-based BI they can self-host. The open-source software is free to run yourself (you pay infrastructure/ops costs — realistically several thousand dollars a year at moderate scale); managed hosting from third parties commonly starts around $49/month, and enterprise/managed options add permissions, SSO, and support. It competes with Metabase, Apache Superset, Mode, and Looker, differentiating on open-source, SQL-first BI with broad data-source support.