Rill
The fastest business intelligence tool for humans and agents.
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What is Rill?
Rill is a high-performance, AI-native business intelligence tool designed to reduce time-to-insight in seconds. It features Agentic Analytics with a natural language interface that powers instant, visual, and verifiable insights. Unlike traditional BI tools, Rill comes with its own embedded in-memory database using DuckDB, where data and compute are co-located, enabling queries to return in milliseconds for instant pivoting, slicing, and drill-down capabilities.
Key features include a metrics-first philosophy where Rill automatically creates visualizations based on metrics, last-mile ETL using SQL for joining and transforming data from dozens of sources, BI-as-code workflows with Git integration for local development and global deployment, and AI-powered dashboard creation that generates relevant visualizations automatically. Rill supports connect to any data source including databases, cloud storage (S3, GCS), BigQuery, Snowflake, ClickHouse, and APIs, with built-in data profiling, pivot tables, time-series analysis, and multi-measure charts.
Rill is designed for data engineers, analytics engineers, BI developers, platform teams, product teams, and customer-facing teams who need fast operational and exploratory BI. It's particularly valuable for teams wanting to cut cloud warehouse bills since Rill's architecture is different from most BI tools that come with hidden costs. The tool serves companies at all stages, from startups to enterprises, and supports embedded analytics for client portals.
Rill pricing
Pricing model: Freemium
Rill offers three pricing tiers: (1) Developer - Free plan includes local development environment, connectors to dozens of data sources, instant profiling of datasets, pivot tables, time series charts, and support via Discord community. (2) Teams - $250/month starting price with 30-day free trial, includes everything in Developer plus cloud dashboards with unlimited seats, 10GB storage included, storage-based pricing for additional GB, real-time alerts to Slack, BI-as-code workflows with GitHub, exports and scheduled reports, embedded analytics for client portals, and support via email & chat. (3) Enterprise - Custom pricing with everything in Teams plus unlimited storage, API access and custom dashboards, SLAs for performance and uptime, Enterprise security (SOC 2 Type 2), and support via dedicated account manager. Rill Cloud uses usage-based pricing for flexibility.
Rill pros
- Conversation-fast performance with millisecond query response times
- Embedded DuckDB engine co-locates data and compute for speed
- AI-powered dashboard creation generates visualizations automatically
- Natural language interface for asking business questions
- BI-as-code workflows with GitHub integration and Git version control
- Connects to dozens of data sources including Snowflake, BigQuery, ClickHouse
- Built-in metrics layer for defining business KPIs consistently
- Pivot tables, time-series analysis, and multi-measure charts out of the box
- Reduces cloud warehouse bills compared to traditional BI tools
- Local development environment with seamless cloud deployment
- Real-time alerts to Slack integration
- Embedded analytics for client portals included
- Automatic data schema detection and profiling
- Drill-down analytics more powerful than traditional static dashboards
- Scheduled reports and exports included in Teams plan
- Open source with active Discord community support
- No database access required at runtime - queries run in-memory
Rill cons
- Limited chart types optimized for slice-and-dice, less variety than full BI suites
- Dashboard design entirely up to you - can confuse audience if done poorly
- Styling is opinionated with less custom code flexibility
- Still maturing feature set compared to established BI tools
- Requires data to be loaded into Rill (push ETL), not virtualization
- Requires understanding of data concepts, not pure drag-and-drop like Tableau
- Initial setup requires technical knowledge for optimal configuration
- Teams plan starts at $250/month which may be expensive for small teams
- Storage-based pricing after 10GB included can add up quickly
Frequently asked questions about Rill
What is Rill Developer?
Rill Developer is a local application that makes it easy to build end-to-end analytics pipelines. It lets you connect to data sources, write SQL or YAML models for last-mile transformations, define a metrics layer with measures and dimensions, and preview interactive dashboards all from your local machine. You can install it with two commands: curl https://rill.sh | sh and rill start my-rill-project. Once ready, you can deploy to Rill Cloud for team collaboration and production use.
What data sources does Rill support?
Rill supports a wide range of data sources through its connector library including S3, GCS, BigQuery, Snowflake, ClickHouse, databases, cloud storage, and APIs. When you connect data, Rill automatically detects your data schema, provides a preview of the first 150 rows, analyzes data types, value ranges, and patterns, and creates a foundation for your analytics.
How does Rill's Agentic Analytics work?
Rill's Agentic Analytics goes beyond dashboards with a natural language interface that powers instant, visual, and verifiable insights. Users can ask business questions in natural language the way they would ask a human, and Rill provides answers with visualizations that make insights instantly clear. It includes AI Chat in Rill Cloud for exploring dashboards and data without local setup.
What is BI-as-code?
BI-as-code is Rill's approach to developing locally and deploying globally with all the benefits of Git workflows. You write SQL or YAML models for data transformations, define metrics in code, and use GitHub for version control and collaboration. This enables CI/CD workflows, reproducibility, and team collaboration on analytics projects.
How does Rill's embedded database work?
Rill comes with its own embedded in-memory database using DuckDB as the default engine. Data and compute are co-located, meaning queries run in-memory without requiring database access at runtime. This architecture enables conversation-fast performance with queries returning in milliseconds, allowing you to pivot, slice, and drill-down into data instantly.
Can I embed Rill dashboards in my application?
Yes, Rill is designed to fit into your existing stack. You can embed interactive dashboards directly into web applications using iframes, programmatically control them with the Embed API, or build custom API endpoints to pull Rill data into external tools and workflows. Embedded analytics for client portals is included in the Teams plan.
What visuzalization types does Rill support?
Rill supports pivot tables, time-series analysis, multi-measure charts, bar charts, line/bar graphs, topN tables, and automatic visualization of time/number data. The system automatically generates relevant visualizations based on your data when using AI-powered dashboard creation. Rill focuses on metrics dashboards with chart types optimized for fast slice-and-dice exploration.
How does Rill compare to traditional BI tools?
Rill is faster than traditional BI tools with millisecond query response times due to its embedded DuckDB engine. Most BI tools come with hidden costs from warehouse queries, but Rill's architecture cuts cloud warehouse bills. Traditional BI tools aren't fast enough for operational and exploratory BI, while Rill excels at fast interactive exploratory analytics. Rill also offers AI-assisted real-time decision-making and natural language queries that most BI tools lack.
What is included in the free Developer plan?
The free Developer plan includes a local development environment, connectors to dozens of data sources, instant profiling of datasets, pivot tables, time series charts, and more. You get support via Discord community. This plan is ideal for getting started, building and testing locally before deploying to Rill Cloud for team collaboration.
How does Rill's metrics layer work?
Rill's built-in semantic layer lets you define business KPIs and calculations as measures and dimensions. This true metrics store approach defines metrics once for consistency across dashboards. The metrics view gets configured automatically when using AI-powered dashboard creation, and you can navigate different views including pivot tables and time-series analysis. Every metric or dimension in your dataset is available for Explore dashboards.