BI & dashboard platforms · Apache Software Foundation

Apache Superset

Open-source, SQL-centric dashboarding and visualization tool originated at Airbnb, now an Apache Software Foundation project.

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Apache Superset is a free, open-source data exploration and visualization platform. It began as an internal hackathon project at Airbnb in 2015, was open sourced in 2016, and was donated to the Apache Software Foundation, becoming a top-level Apache project in 2021. Superset provides a no-code chart builder alongside a full SQL editor (SQL Lab) for writing and saving queries against a connected database, and ships with a large ecosystem of chart types and community plugins for building dashboards with cross-filtering. Because it is a self-hosted project with no first-party managed cloud offering from the Apache Software Foundation itself, teams run it on their own infrastructure (commonly via Docker or Kubernetes) and are responsible for scaling, authentication, and upgrades, or use a commercial provider such as Preset for a managed version.

At a glance

Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Pricing model Open source + paid options
Free tier Yes
Deployment Self-hosted
Open source Yes (Apache-2.0)
Best for Engineering-led teams that want a free, self-hosted, SQL-centric dashboarding tool with a large chart and plugin ecosystem.

Pricing

Free and open source under Apache 2.0; the Apache Software Foundation does not sell a hosted plan (see Preset for managed hosting).

Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.

Features

  • No-code drag-and-drop chart builder
  • SQL Lab query editor with saved queries
  • 40+ visualization types plus a plugin ecosystem
  • Cross-filtering interactive dashboards
  • Role-based access control
  • Broad SQLAlchemy-based database connectivity
  • Query result caching
  • Self-hosted via Docker or Kubernetes

Integrations

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Head to head

Alternatives

Preset Commercial, hosted version of Apache Superset from Superset's original creators, adding managed infrastructure, SSO, and governance. Redash Open-source, SQL-first tool for querying multiple data sources and building lightweight, shareable dashboards; self-hosted only. Metabase Open-source business intelligence tool for self-service dashboards, SQL and no-code queries, and embedded analytics. Lightdash Open-source BI tool built on top of dbt, reading dbt models and metric definitions as its semantic layer for teams already using dbt.

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Terms to know

Data visualization Representing data graphically so that patterns, trends and outliers are easier to see than in a table of numbers. Dashboard A visual display of the metrics a team needs to monitor, usually updated on a schedule or in real time. Self-service BI BI tooling that lets business users build their own reports and explore data without waiting on IT or analytics teams. OLAP (online analytical processing) A category of technology optimized for fast, multi-dimensional aggregation and slicing of data for analysis. Exploratory data analysis An open-ended first pass through a dataset to understand its structure and spot patterns before formal analysis. Role-based access control (RBAC) Granting data or system permissions based on a user's assigned role rather than configuring access for each person individually.