Business Intelligence And Analytics — hobby stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
BI Platform / Dashboarding Tool
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSuperset OSS: Free self-hosted, unlimited users/dashboards, infra $20-50/mo VM. Metabase OSS: Free self-hosted MIT, unlimited. Metabase Cloud Starter $29/mo (up to 10 users), Pro $500/mo (10 users incl., $20/user extra). Tableau Cloud Viewer $15/user/mo, Explorer $42/user/mo, Creator $75/user/mo, 14-day free trial. Power BI Pro $14/user/mo, Premium $20/user/mo. Looker $35k/yr platform fee + $60/user/mo. Overage: $5-20/user/mo extra, compute separate.
Data Warehouse Connector / Query Engine
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDuckDB OSS: Free unlimited queries local. MotherDuck: Free 10GB storage + 10GB queried/mo, then $20/mo for 100GB storage + $20 per 100GB queried. BigQuery: Free 1TB queries/mo + 10GB storage, then $6.25/TB scanned on-demand or $0.04/slot-hour flat (~$1k/mo for 25 slots). Snowflake: Free trial $400 credit, then Standard $2-3/credit (XS = 1 credit/hr ~$2/hr), storage $40/TB/mo. Redshift Serverless $0.36/RPU-hr. Overage: Auto-suspend saves compute.
Semantic Layer / Metrics Store
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsdbt Core OSS: Free self-hosted unlimited models. Cube.js OSS: Free self-hosted unlimited. Cube Cloud: Free 1 deployment, 1M queries/mo, 2 concurrency, then Developer $99/mo for 10M queries, storage 10GB incl. dbt Cloud Developer free 1 seat, Team $100/seat/mo (min 8 seats ~$800/mo). Looker LookML included in $35k/yr platform fee. Overage: Cube $0.10 per 1k queries, dbt Cloud $100/seat/mo extra.
Caching for BI Queries
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsRedis OSS self-hosted free, infra $10/mo VM. Upstash: Free 10k commands/day, 256MB max, then $0.20 per 100k commands, Pay-as-you-go $10/mo min. Dragonfly Cloud free 2GB. Redis Cloud free 30MB, Essentials from $5/mo 100MB, $12/mo 1GB, Pro $100/mo 5GB. ElastiCache t4g.micro $11/mo, t4g.small $22/mo. Overage: Upstash $0.4/GB egress, Redis Cloud $0.15/GB, storage $0.20/GB/mo.
Dashboard Hosting / Embedded Frontend
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Hobby: Free 100GB bandwidth, 6000 execution hrs, then Pro $20/user/mo + $40 per 100GB bandwidth over. Cloudflare Pages free unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/mo. Netlify free 100GB bandwidth. Tableau Server $35/user/mo min 10 users ($4.2k/yr + infra). ECS Fargate for Metabase $15-50/mo per service. Overage: Vercel $0.40/GB bandwidth, $0.60 per 1k function invocations over.
Object Storage for Report Exports (PDF/CSV)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2: Free 10GB storage + 10M Class A + 10M Class B ops, egress free. Paid $0.015/GB/mo storage, $4.50/M Class A ops after free. S3: Free 5GB 12 months then $0.023/GB/mo storage, $0.09/GB egress, $0.005/1k PUT. B2: Free 10GB then $0.006/GB storage, $0.01/GB egress. GCS: Free 5GB then $0.02/GB/mo + $0.12/GB egress. Overage: R2 no egress fees, S3 cheapest for long-term with lifecycle.
Auth for BI (SSO, RBAC, Row-Level)
How users sign up, log in, and are authorized. Getting roles and access control right early prevents painful rewrites.Pricing & free-tier limitsAuth0 free 25k MAU, 3 enterprise connections, then Essentials $35/mo for 500 MAU, Professional $240/mo for 1k MAU + $0.08/MAU over. Clerk free 10k MAU, Pro $25/mo + $0.02/MAU over 10k. Supabase Auth free 50k MAU included. Okta SSO $2/user/mo min $1500/yr. Overage: Auth0 $0.07-0.20 per extra MAU, Clerk $0.02/MAU.
Email for Report Delivery
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsResend: Free 3k emails/mo + 1 domain, Pro $20/mo 50k emails then $0.90/1k over. SES: Free 3k/mo sandbox or 62k if from EC2 (first year), then $0.10/1k emails + $0.12/GB attachments. SendGrid free 100/day, Essentials $19.95/mo 50k. Postmark free 100/mo then $15/mo 10k. Overage: Resend $1/1k over, SES $0.10/1k linear.
Background Jobs for Scheduled Reports
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions free 2000 min/mo private, then $0.008/min Linux. QStash free 500 messages/day, then $10/mo for 10k msgs, $1 per 10k over. Trigger.dev free 2k runs/mo, Pro $29/mo 10k runs + $0.003/run over. Inngest free 50k step runs/mo, Pro $20/mo 250k steps then $0.0001/step. Temporal Cloud free 10k actions/mo then $0.18/1k actions. Overage: linear per run.
Data Ingestion / ETL for BI
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsAirbyte OSS free self-hosted unlimited connectors, infra $20-100/mo VM. dlt free OSS. Airbyte Cloud free 500 credits/mo (~5M rows), then $2.50/credit $10 min. Fivetran free 14-day trial, Starter from $500/mo for 500k MAR (monthly active rows), Standard $1-2 per credit ~$0.40/MAR over. Overage: $2.50/credit, Fivetran $0.30-0.60 per extra 1k MAR.
Monitoring for Dashboard Performance & Query Observability
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsGrafana Cloud free 10k series metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 14d retention, 3 users. Pro $29/mo per 15k metrics + 8 users $8/1k metrics over. UptimeRobot free 50 monitors 5min interval. Better Stack free 10 monitors then $24/mo. Datadog APM $31/host/mo, logs $0.10/GB ingested, metrics $0.05/custom metric. New Relic free 100GB/mo then $0.30/GB. Overage: Grafana $8/1000 series, Datadog $0.15/GB logs over.
How this hobby business intelligence and analytics checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a hobby business intelligence and analytics build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.