Buying snapshot
Scroll sideways to see all columns. With a keyboard, focus this table and use the arrow keys.
| Decision point | What Yellowfin states |
|---|---|
Deployment | Self-managed on-premise or in the cloud, or a fully managed service hosted by Yellowfin. For ISVs and OEMs: cloud, on-prem or hybrid. |
Docker images | All-In-One (application plus repository database) is for short trials and demos only: no data kept outside the container, no clustering. Application Only connects to an existing repository database and can run in production, alone or as a cluster node. |
License | All-In-One needs a license file loaded in the web interface after startup. Application Only uses the license already in the repository; if none is there, one loaded in the web interface applies to all nodes that share the repository. |
Data sources | Databases, spreadsheets and web APIs, with governed, reusable data sets for self-service reporting. |
Embedding | Lightweight JavaScript API or secure iframes; every element can be white-labelled. |
Dev and test (ISVs and OEMs) | No limits on dev and test licenses and no limit on access to functionality across users. |
Analytics database | High-performance in-memory analytics database, on-premise, in the cloud or both. |
Trial | Explore on the sample dataset, or try free on your own dataset for 30 days. |
Our take
Choose Yellowfin if analytics is part of the product you sell: its embedding, white-labelling and pricing models are built around software vendors. If you only need internal BI, it makes most sense when your team will use automated monitoring and data stories, since those are where it differs most.
Evaluate Yellowfin
Comparisons
Where it stands out
Monitoring that comes to you. Besides threshold-based alerts, Yellowfin Signals runs automated analysis and sends personalized signals about the changes that matter. Yellowfin says Signals can be added to an existing dashboard environment from any vendor, so you do not have to replace current dashboards to use it.
Reports with context. Stories and Present build management reports inside Yellowfin, and Stories can embed reports from other dashboard vendors. Yellowfin says this removes the need to cut and paste report data.
One platform, white-labelled. Dashboards, Data Discovery, Signals, Data Storytelling and Data Prep are five core products in one platform, with full white-labelling. A mobile app is part of the platform. Yellowfin says embedded customers can go live in under two weeks.
Questions in plain language. Version 9.18 adds conversational analytics: users ask questions in natural language and get charts with no SQL, and each follow-up keeps the context of the last one.
Clustered self-hosting. The Application Only Docker image has repository clustering turned on, so several nodes that share one repository database can join one cluster behind a load balancer.
Product screenshot
Trade-offs to weigh
Automated monitoring sits in Analytics Plus. Analytics Plus is everything in Yellowfin Analytics plus Automated Business Monitoring with Signals. If Signals is a reason to buy, make sure the quote covers Analytics Plus.
Self-hosted upgrades are manual work. The All-In-One image has no upgrade path; recreating it downloads the latest published installer. With Application Only, you upgrade the repository database by hand, then start a new container version against it. A zero-downtime upgrade in a cluster means putting existing nodes in read-only mode while the database is upgraded.
Production needs its own repository database. The All-In-One image loses all content when its container is terminated. For production, you install a Yellowfin repository with the standard installer first, then point Application Only containers at it.
Pricing and plan conditions
For software vendors, Yellowfin fits one of three pricing models to how you sell your own product. The enquiry form on its pricing page asks for your number of users: under 25, 25 to 100, 100 to 500, or 500 and more. Analytics Plus, which adds Signals, is available on a named user, server and custom pricing basis.
Scroll sideways to see all columns. With a keyboard, focus this table and use the arrow keys.
| Model | How the price is set |
|---|---|
Aligned Utility Model | Price per unit, based on your analytics usage and aligned to how you sell, for example by site, app, bus or device. |
Revenue Share Model | For add-on analytics: based on the value of revenue from your add-on analytics module. |
Server Core | Fixed price based on server cores (for example, a 4 core deployment); scales only as deployment needs scale. |
Public signals
About these signals
Verified factual signals from public sources. They indicate observable activity or interest, not total adoption, product quality, or cost.
5 GitHub commits 90d7 GitHub stars
See all signals from 3 sources
Alternatives to Yellowfin
The reviewed substitutes for Yellowfin among the BI platforms, and what would make each one the better answer.
Direct alternatives
Reviewed substitutes: products bought for the same job, where a team picks one.
- Spotfire
- Spotfire and Yellowfin each sell an enterprise analytics platform with interactive dashboards and AI-driven insight. Spotfire suits in-depth analysis, with predictive analytics and geospatial maps for technical users. Yellowfin suits delivering automated insight and data stories to business users, often inside SaaS products.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the enterprise bi decision.
- Amazon QuickSight
- Amazon QuickSight and Yellowfin each deliver dashboards and automated insight to business users and can place those dashboards inside other applications. QuickSight is a managed AWS service that fits teams already on AWS. Yellowfin comes from an independent vendor and is designed for SaaS products, with automated analysis and data storytelling.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the enterprise bi decision.
- Domo
- Domo and Yellowfin each give an organisation dashboards and automated insight on its business data. Domo bundles data connectors, data preparation and app building into one cloud platform. Yellowfin focuses on data storytelling and automated analysis, and it is designed to be built into SaaS applications.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the enterprise bi decision.
- GoodData
- GoodData and Yellowfin are built for software companies that want to deliver dashboards to their customers inside their own product. GoodData stresses an API-first design and a governed semantic layer that developers manage as code. Yellowfin stresses automated analysis and data storytelling that business users read in the dashboards.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the enterprise bi decision.
- Looker
- Looker and Yellowfin deliver dashboards to internal teams and inside SaaS applications. Looker is the Google Cloud platform organised around a central LookML semantic model. Yellowfin is an independent platform focused on automated analysis and data storytelling, designed for software vendors that ship analytics to customers.Applies to: Choosing between these two for the enterprise bi decision.