Open Report › Alternatives › Power BI
The open source alternative to Power BI
Power BI is a capable product with a deep modelling engine and an ecosystem built over a decade. People look for an alternative for reasons that have little to do with features: the authoring tool runs on Windows, the licence is counted per person, and the data ends up in someone else’s cloud. Open Report answers those three, and is honest about what it gives up in exchange.
Side by side
| Open Report | Power BI | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | GNU AGPL-3.0 — source readable and forkable | Proprietary, Microsoft |
| Where it runs | Your servers, or a hosted Cloud in France | Microsoft cloud (Power BI Service) |
| Where your data sits | In your own databases; the SQL runs from your server | Datasets are published to the service |
| Authoring | A browser, on any operating system | Power BI Desktop, on Windows |
| Pricing model | Free when self-hosted, whatever the number of readers | Per user, or by reserved capacity |
| Row-level security | Defined once on the model, applied to every report | Yes, defined per dataset |
| Can you read the source? | Yes | No |
Where Power BI is stronger
No tool wins everywhere, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading.
- A modelling language, DAX, with years of material written about it, and time intelligence that goes far beyond what Open Report offers.
- A very large catalogue of connectors, including a great many SaaS products Open Report does not reach.
- Deep integration with Excel and the rest of Microsoft 365, which matters enormously if your organisation already lives there.
- AI features, natural-language questions, and a certification and governance apparatus built for very large companies.
Where Open Report fits better
- Adding a reader costs nothing. Reports can be shared with a whole company, or published as a public link, without counting seats.
- Nothing leaves your infrastructure. The application queries your databases from your own server — which is often the shortest route through a security review.
- Authoring works from any browser, on Linux and macOS as well as Windows.
- The tool cannot be discontinued or re-priced out from under you: it is AGPL-3.0, and the source is yours to fork.
Try it yourself
Self-hosting takes one command from a fresh clone — the installer checks your Node version and installs it if needed. Or open the hosted app and skip the server entirely.
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