How Much Does BI Software Cost? 2023 Pricing Guide

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Pricing is one of the most important factors in choosing business intelligence (BI) software.

While some vendors provide transparent pricing details on their websites, most of them prefer to provide a personalized price quote, as company needs and requirements vary.

We’ve developed this pricing guide that details pricing types, additional costs a company needs to consider and pricing examples from well-known BI vendors.

What Is BI?

Business intelligence helps users derive meaningful insights from raw data. It’s an umbrella term that includes the software, infrastructure, policies and procedures that can lead to smarter, data-driven decision making. In the past, BI software was used exclusively by data analysts and IT professionals. Nowadays, any user can take advantage of BI tools, regardless of their data skillset, due to the self-service functionality. 

BI Pricing Models

Pricing for BI software can vary depending on company size, customization, types of users and deployment. It can range from $10 per user, per month up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for an on-premise deployment.

Here are a few questions you should consider regarding pricing: 

• Is there a clear plan to judge return on investment? 
• What is our budget for implementing/hosting/purchasing BI software? 
• How many users will need to access the software?

Some BI solutions base their pricing on the type of users that access the software. Do you have power users (i.e., data analysts) that need full BI functionality? Or do you have users that only need to create visualizations or access reports? Before researching vendors, it’s best to have an idea of which employees require full functionality versus ones that just need specific features.

BI vendors use two popular pricing models: perpetual licensing (on-premise) and subscription hosting plans (cloud). Here’s a look at each:

Perpetual licensing – Businesses that prefer to host their own data can purchase licenses that last for the software’s lifespan. On-premise deployment requires the business to purchase hardware, servers and other infrastructure, as well as use IT resources to host and maintain the solution.  

Perpetual licenses can be an attractive option for larger businesses, businesses with complex systems or businesses that are concerned with data security. Even though you pay for any licenses and infrastructure up front, maintenance and product upgrades typically aren’t free, so you’ll have to consider IT labor costs, vendor support and potential system breakdowns in your price factors. 

Subscription hosting – Businesses that don’t have the time or resources to host their own solution can consider deploying BI in the cloud. They’ll only need to pay a monthly or annual subscription cost.  

Subscription costs can include the types of features the company needs, types of BI users (power user versus view-only users), support and maintenance. Cloud-based deployment can be an attractive option for smaller businesses, as it typically costs less than an on-premise solution. 

Additional Costs To Consider

Some vendors offer implementation, support and additional services in the price. Others may require additional fees for them.

Implementation – Prices of implementation services vary by vendor and can include access to a dedicated implementation specialist, installation, software customization, data migration, database architecture, dashboard template designs and integration to other software (e.g., ERP systems). Some vendors have a staff of implementation specialists while others rely on third-party consultants.

Training – Some vendors include basic training services for free, but others offer them at an additional cost, especially if the training is done at the client’s site.

Support – Basic support (e.g., knowledge base, email support) is typically included in the price. However, some vendors offer plans that include advanced support, such as priority support or access to a dedicated customer service manager. If you opt for perpetual licensing, note that certain vendors may offer support and product upgrades for free for the first year but charge extra in the second year and beyond.

Pricing Questions To Ask a Vendor

Once you’ve compared price quotes and decided on a specific vendor, you’ll want to see a copy of the contract (also known as a Service Level Agreement). Here are some key questions to ask the vendor as you look over the agreement:  

• What is the total cost of the solution (TCO), including all implementation, training and other fees? 
• Are there any undisclosed costs? 
• Are there any “evergreen” (e.g., subscription automatically renews without client approval) clauses? 
• Do you offer partial licenses? 

Be prepared to negotiate for better pricing with the vendor. 

BI Vendor Pricing

Below, we’ve compared pricing of popular BI solutions. Note that because a vast majority of vendors prefer to provide customized pricing based on a company’s needs, public pricing information isn’t always available. You’ll need to contact them directly for a quote.

Alteryx – Alteryx offers a per-year licensing subscription that covers product updates and support. Alteryx Designer costs $5,195 per user, per year and its additional capabilities include Location Intelligence dataset ($11,700 per user per year), Consumer Intelligence ($33,800 per user, per year) and the Intelligence Suite ($2,300 per user, per year).

ClicData – ClicData has four pricing tiers that include various features. All plans have the ability to share live, dynamic dashboards with an unlimited audience, and can be used any way the administrator chooses (i.e., as a Named Viewer, an Editor or an Administrator). Additional named users can be added to any plan as needed. Users can also sign up for a 15-day free trial or upgrade at any time. Note that each tier is based on annual billing.

The Personal tier costs $75 per month, the Team tier costs $245 per month, the Business tier is priced at $485 per month and the Enterprise tier requires a custom quote.

Connexica – Connexica’s CXAIR software is licensed as a subscription on a per-user basis. Pricing for a typical starting deployment costs approximately £5K ($6,500) per year for five Full User (full functionality) and 10 View User (view-only access) licenses. Connexica offers discounts up to 70% for volume purchases, as well as competitive pricing for Enterprise deployment. Please contact the vendor directly for a quote.

Datapine – Datapine comes in four price plans depending on the scale of the organization and its degree of analytical needs. The Basic plan, intended for small businesses, costs $249 per month, while the Professional plan is priced at $449 per month. The Premium plan, aimed at mid-sized businesses with high analytical requirements, costs $799 per month. Finally, the Branded and Embedded plan costs $1,099 per month.

Datapine offers the ability to add on users and storage space for a fee. An additional user costs $55 per month, a dashboard viewer costs $12 per month and the high-speed data storage service has volume-based pricing that starts at $45 per month.

Since the solution is available through the cloud, there’s no initial setup fee. The vendor also offers an on-premise option with custom pricing for large enterprise businesses.

GoodData – GoodData has two pricing plans that support unlimited users. The Professional plan starts at $12,000 per year and includes Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting, plus self-service analytics, multitenancy and a semantic layer with reusable metrics. The Enterprise plan adds on enterprise-level security (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR-S), AWS PrivateLink and 24/7 customer support by ticketing, email and phone. Pricing for both plans is based on a custom quote.

IBM Cognos Analytics – IBM Cognos has three options of deployment: On Demand (cloud deployment for up to 200 users), On Cloud Hosted (supports up to 10,000 users) and Client Hosted (on-premise solution).

The On Demand deployment has two pricing plans: Standard and Premium. The Standard plan costs $10 per user, per month, while the Premium plan costs $40 per user, per month.

The On Cloud Hosted option has three pricing plans: Mobile, Viewer and User. The Mobile plan costs $5 per user, per month, the Viewer plan costs $40 per user, per month, and the User plan is $80 per user, per month.

The Client Hosted (or hybrid) deployment has five pricing plans: Mobile, Viewer, User, Explorer and Admin. The Mobile plan is $5 per user, per month, the Viewer plan is $12 per user, per month, the User plan is $40 per user, per month, the Explorer plan is $75 per user, per month and the Admin plan is $450 per user, per month.

InetSoft has two free plans: one for individuals and one for small businesses. The Individual plan includes access to InetSoft via a web browser, the ability to connect with data from uploaded Excel or CSV files and the ability to publicly share dashboards via a URL link.

The Business plan includes all of the features of the Individual plan, plus cloud-based data sources, data mashup and transformation, and private sharing of dashboards within the company.

Then, there are two paid plans. The Growth plan starts at $165 per month (billed annually) and includes all of the features of the Business plan, plus connection with all data sources, flexible admin and user scheduler permissions, and company themes and branding. The Enterprise plan requires a custom quote based on usage and data needs and includes all of the features of the Growth plan, plus paginated reports, multitenancy, enterprise user and data security and regular one-on-one expert consultation.

Microsoft Power BI – Power BI comes in three tiers called Desktop, Pro and Premium. The Desktop tier is free for individual users and includes reporting authoring, data modeling and other Power BI features. The Pro tier costs $10 per user, per month and is primarily aimed at content publishers or content consumers. The Premium tier starts at $4,995 per month and is targeted to large companies that need advanced functionality and flexible deployment. The Premium tier also has an additional per-user strategy that costs $20 per user, per month.

Oracle – The Oracle Analytics Cloud has two pricing plans: Professional and Enterprise. The Professional plan costs $16 per user, per month, while the Enterprise plan is priced at $80 per user, per month. It also uses the Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) per hour strategy for companies that prefer that option. The Professional plan will then cost $0.54 OCPU per hour, and users on the Enterprise plan can expect to pay $1.07 OCPU per hour.

Pricing isn’t publicly available for the Oracle Analytics Server, Oracle Fusion Analytics and Oracle Essbase, so please contact the vendor for a quote.

Qlik Sense – Qlik Sense offers a 30-day free trial for its Cloud Business plan, which costs $30 per user, per month. Then, there’s the Qlik Sense Enterprise, a multi-cloud edition, that includes unlimited shared and managed spaces and in-memory app size limit starting at 5 GB. Pricing is no longer available for Qlik Sense Enterprise, so please contact the vendor directly for a quote.

Slemma – Slemma has three pricing plans that each come with a 14-day free trial. Note that pricing is based on cloud deployment and annual billing. The Small Business plan costs $89 per month, the Standard plan costs $179 per month and the Client Reporting plan costs $539 per month.

For on-premise deployment, companies can choose to purchase the perpetual license or pay by subscription. For example, a company with 100 users can obtain a perpetual license for a one-time payment of $19,999 (including maintenance and support for the first year). Annual maintenance and support for the second year and beyond costs $3,999 per year. Companies can purchase additional user licenses for $7 per user (10-user minimum).

Tableau – Tableau’s subscription pricing strategy focuses on individual users and their data needs. Each subscription includes maintenance, product upgrades and support in one cost, so there are no surprise fees.

Tableau has three main plans. Tableau Creator is priced at $70 per user, per month (billed annually). Tableau Explorer costs $35 per user, per month if deployed on-premise or $42 per user, per month if deployed in the cloud.  Finally, Tableau Viewer costs $12 per user per month (on-premise) and $15 per user, per month (cloud).

Tellius – Tellius has two pricing plans: Premium and Enterprise. The Premium plan costs $495 per month for up to five users, while the Enterprise plan requires a custom quote.

TIBCO Cloud Spotfire – TIBCO Cloud Spotfire is available in four pricing editions. The Analyst edition ($125 per month or $1,250 per year) includes 250 GB of data storage for each analyst. The Business Author edition ($65 per month or $650 per year) comes with 100 GB of data storage.

The Consumer edition ($25 per month or $250 per year) is intended for users that want viewer-only access to the software. Companies that want to purchase this edition must also purchase one Analyst or one Business Author license. Finally, the Library Storage edition costs $25 per month or $250 per year for 25 GB of storage.

Yellowfin – Yellowfin’s suite of products is bundled into specific packages that’s based on either per user or per core server. The Data Prep package costs $120 per user (minimum of 12,000 users), the Analytics package is $600 per user (minimum of 12,000 users) and the Analytics Plus package is $900 per user (minimum of 18,000 users). The Stories packages costs $12,000 per 100 users and includes third-party Stories add-ons).

In the core server plan (which requires a minimum of four core servers), the Analytics package is $75,000, the Analytics Plus package is $111,000 and the Signals package is $75,000. The Stories package is $48,000 for a maximum of 500 users. Note that companies with only two servers can purchase the Analytics package for $37,500.

Zoho Analytics – Zoho Analytics has a free plan that accommodates up to two users and 10,000 data rows. It includes basic features like unlimited dashboards, over 75 visualization options and up to five workspaces. Then, there are four paid plans (billed annually).

The Basic plan costs $24 per month and accommodates up to 500,000 data rows, the Standard plan costs $48 per month and accommodates up to five users and 1 million data rows, the Premium plan costs $115 per month and accommodates up to 15 users and 5 million data rows and the Enterprise plan costs $455 per month and accommodates up to 50 users and 50 million data rows.

Bottom Line

BI pricing varies based on deployment, company size, types of users and features offered. While some vendors provide transparent pricing, others don’t, so you’ll need to take that into consideration. Before you research vendors, its key to know what your specific budget and requirements are for BI software.

If you’d like more information on BI software or want to compare different solutions, we’ve reviewed over 50 vendors.

Download This Pricing Guide As a PDF