Competitor pricing and feature information updated March 2026.
What is Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift is a petabyte-scale data warehouse service based in the cloud. This makes it very easy to set up a data warehouse, with many scaling options too. We believe that the most important thing about using Amazon Redshift and AWS is that you have a complete understanding of the different BI and Reporting tools available for Amazon Redshift. This is why we provide truthful and transparent information because we want to enable and empower you to make the best decision for your business needs. In this article, we're taking a deeper look at the top five BI and reporting tools available to help you gain a better understanding of the options available to you (and we're going to share a great bonus option with you as well, hint: 🦊).1. Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is owned by Microsoft and is a powerful tool that supports a large number of data sources, allowing companies the ability to centralize their data in one place. With a user-friendly interface and data visualization capabilities, it does work best if you're already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem. Power BI pricing starts with Pro at $14 per user per month (increased from $10 in April 2025), with Premium Per User at $24/month for advanced features like larger datasets (100GB vs 1GB on Pro). However, if you need advanced security, governance, or AI capabilities, you'll need Fabric capacity starting around $5,000 per month. For a team of 25 users on Pro, you're looking at $350 per month - but this doesn't include white-label branding or row-level security, which requires Premium or Fabric tiers (We break down more on Power BI's cost here). Microsoft Power BI supports many data sources, including Amazon Redshift. They also provide frequent updates. However, that doesn't offset some of the issues users have mentioned such as the steep learning curved involved and the ability to only use on Windows Desktop environments.2. Tableau
Tableau is often one of the top choices considered by analysts when considering their BI tool needs. It provides powerful visual analytics and data drilling tools, available across all of its products. Tableau provides live and in-memory data, with easy switching between extracted data and live connections. You're able to collaborate securely via the use of the Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Their user-interface is drag-and-drop, which makes using it extremely user-friendly. Tableau and Amazon Redshift are integrated out-of-the-box, meaning you can connect to your data warehouse with minimal effort. On the downside, Tableau can feel overwhelming to use and comes with enterprise-level pricing. Standard plans start with Creator licenses at $75/month, Explorer at $42/month, and Viewer at $15/month (all requiring annual commitments). For 25 Explorer users, you're looking at $1,050 per month. While Tableau recently added custom subdomains, they don't offer full white-label branding, and row-level security requires Enterprise tier plus Data Management add-ons. A lot of features often go unnoticed and unused, due to the single interface setup, and trying to locate a particular function can be difficult. There is also a surprising lack of BI capabilities. Tableau lacks large-scale reporting, the building of data tables, and static layouts. But the major feature it lacks is the cleaning and prepping of data to be imported into Tableau Desktop. To achieve this, you need additional support.3. Amazon Quicksight
Amazon Quicksight is an AWS business intelligence tool. It integrates seamlessly with Amazon Redshift, providing beautiful visuals and an interactive dashboard. It is iOS and web-browser friendly too. Amazon Quicksight has many positives. It's easy to set up, with users stating that it takes less than an hour to be up and running and has a low learning curve. It will integrate with popular data sources, including Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, Amazon S3, Amazon Aurora, SQL servers, local Excel files, and more. It can also support information from other services like Salesforce and Tableau. As great as it may seem, Amazon Quicksight is not without its faults. It has limited options for charts and graphs (although what they have are visually stunning) and is relatively new to the BI scene, meaning it is still under development with a lot of room to grow.4. Mode
Mode is touted as being the best for data team collaboration and work, particularly if you don't need much in the way of self-service. Out of all the tools mentioned in this article, Mode is the only one that allows SQL Analysts and R/Python users to use the same tool and work side-by-side. If your primary focus on the data team is productivity, Mode is your best option. With shared workspaces and dashboards, Mode fosters team collaboration with ease. This is perfect if you've got multiple people working on the same material. Mode integrates with Amazon Redshift with ease too allowing data teams to remove common bottlenecks in data integration, cleansing, or ETL processes that load data into Amazon Redshift. One of the biggest drawbacks of Mode is that to use it well, you'll need to know SQL, Python, or R. In order for users to be able to explore from scratch, they will struggle unless reports are able to be developed right from the get-go.5. Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SRSS)
SSRS is a server-based reporting platform that comes bundled with SQL Server licenses at no additional cost. However, SSRS 2022 is the final version - it's not included in SQL Server 2025, with mainstream support ending January 2033. Microsoft's replacement path leads through Power BI Report Server, then to Power BI Cloud, and ultimately to Fabric. SSRS provides an interface into Microsoft Visual Studio which allows it to be connected to SQL databases and use SSRS tools and utilities to format SQL in many complex ways. SSRS provides server-based reporting focused on delivering comprehensive reporting functions for a spectrum of data sources. It excels at pixel-perfect paginated reports and has extensive formatting capabilities. However, SSRS has significant limitations for modern BI needs. It's Windows-only, on-premise only, with no cloud deployment options. It lacks interactive dashboards, self-service capabilities, and white-label branding. As an end-of-life product with no new features planned, it's increasingly difficult to justify for new implementations. Out of all the options mentioned, SSRS is the least recommended for modern BI and dashboard requirements.One More Reporting Option for Amazon Redshift
We like to say we've saved the best for last, but of course, we're biased.But we're also a little modest so we're not going to name ourselves to be in the Top 5, we'll leave that decision up to you.Looking for powerful dashboards and reports for your data stored in Amazon Redshift, look no further than our software, DashboardFox. Why DashboardFox over the others mentioned? Well, why many of the names above are power-houses in the BI industry, they all come with advantages and disadvantages. No BI software is best for everyone. Here are a few things we think makes DashboardFox stand out against the competition: Ease of Use - DashboardFox was designed for business users. So while many of the options above require a developer-level skill to work with DAX scripting in Power BI, or SQL code directly in tools like Mode, SSRS, and Tableau, with DashboardFox you don't have to be a SQL or database expert to do some powerful things. But when you do, that takes us to the next major benefit. Customer Support - All the other companies mentioned are pretty large, and when it comes to technical support, you're in the normal support queue experience that comes with big industry. Googling for answers from web sources, submitting tickets to a level 1 tech, going back and forth for resolutions, and possibly being told it's a professional services thing that takes more cost. DashboardFox is a bootstrapped, small company, and you're the big fish in our small pond. You're talking to a technical expert and if we can't get your answer right away, we're scheduling a screen share with you so we can diagnose what is going on and fixing it as fast as possible. Plus when you have needs and ideas for new features, we bump them to the top of our roadmap. Cost - Last but not least, the truth is that many BI products these days cost an arm and a leg. And in most cases, it requires an ongoing subscription just to keep the product working. With DashboardFox, we offer a transparent pricing model with our cloud SaaS platform. Start with a 7-day free trial, no credit card required, and pay only for your monthly active users. Every plan includes row-level security, white-label branding, and unlimited reports and dashboards. We also offer a self-hosted option for organizations with specific deployment requirements.
