🩺 Vitals
- 🟢 Last active: 2026-07-09
- 📦 Latest release: v26.3.0 (2026-03-02)
- 🐞 Open issues: 797
- 🌟 Stars: 28.7k
What do these metrics mean?
- Last active: when code was last pushed, as of our last check. The dot is green when that was recent, grey otherwise. A long gap can mean a tool is finished and stable, not only unmaintained.
- Latest release: the most recent tagged, packaged version the maintainers published. Not every healthy project tags releases.
- Open issues: unresolved reports and requests. A high number is normal for a popular project and is not a warning on its own.
- Stars: how many people bookmarked the project on its forge. A rough popularity signal, not a measure of quality.
🏗️ Profile
- Official: redash.io
- Source: github.com/getredash/redash
- License: BSD 2-Clause
- Deployment: Docker / Kubernetes
- Data Model: SQL-first / PostgreSQL + Redis backend
- Jurisdiction: Global Community 🌐 (no corporate entity)
- Compliance (SaaS): N/A (hosted service discontinued 2021)
- Compliance (Self-Hosted): Self-Hosted (User Managed)
- Complexity: Medium (3/5) - Multi-container (Postgres, Redis, workers)
- Maintenance: Medium (3/5) - Community releases, dependency upgrades
- Enterprise Ready: Medium (3/5) - Groups/RBAC, SAML & OAuth, no audit tier
1. The Executive Summary
What is it? Redash is a query-centric analytics tool. Where Metabase hides SQL behind a visual builder, Redash puts the query first: an analyst writes SQL against any of 50+ data sources, saves it, attaches visualizations, and layers scheduled refreshes and alerts on top. It is the analyst's shared scratchpad, a single place to write, publish, and monitor queries without a per-seat licence.
Its history is the sovereignty argument in miniature. Databricks acquired Redash in 2020 and shut down the hosted service in 2021, and the project stalled for years. The community then took it over outright, and Redash now ships regular releases (v26.x, CalVer) with active security maintenance. No single vendor could end it, because no single vendor owns it.
The Strategic Verdict:
- 🔴 For Non-Technical Self-Service: Caution. Redash is SQL-first by design, so business users who cannot write queries will hit a wall. There is also no foundation or commercial backer, so there is no support SLA to buy.
- 🟢 For Data & Analyst Teams: Strong Buy. 50+ connectors, built-in alerting, unlimited users at zero per-seat cost, and a maximally permissive BSD licence with no enterprise tax and no embedding restrictions.
2. The "Hidden" Costs (TCO Analysis)
| Cost Component | Looker (SaaS) | Redash (Self-Hosted) |
|---|---|---|
| Analyst & Viewer Seats | Platform licence + per-user (enterprise quote) | $0 (Unlimited) |
| Alerting & Scheduling | Bundled into platform tier | Built-in ($0) |
| Embedding | Additional licensing | Native ($0) |
3. The "Day 2" Reality Check
🚀 Deployment & Operations
- Installation: Deployed via Docker Compose. The server bundles a PostgreSQL metadata store, a Redis queue, and Celery workers. Production Kubernetes runs via community Helm charts.
- Scalability: Query execution is offloaded to Celery workers backed by Redis; heavy reporting loads scale by adding worker containers horizontally rather than vertically sizing a single node.
🛡️ Security & Governance (Risk Assessment)
- Jurisdiction & Geopolitics (Global Community 🌐): Redash has no corporate owner and no legal HQ, so there is no vendor entity that a foreign authority could compel under the CLOUD Act or a data-localisation statute. Sovereignty here is structural: self-host it and your query metadata and credentials never leave your own jurisdiction.
- The Compliance Shift: Because the managed service is gone, there is no vendor-held SOC 2 to inherit, so access control, encryption, backups, and audit posture fall 100% on your team. The governance trade-off to price in honestly: unlike Apache Superset under the Apache Software Foundation, Redash has no foundation backing and no commercial support tier. That is a real bus-factor consideration for a mission-critical deployment.
- License Risk (BSD-2-Clause): The lowest-risk profile on the board. BSD-2 is maximally permissive, with no copyleft, no AGPL network clause, no badgeware, and no paywalled features. You can fork, embed, and white-label freely. The one honest nuance: BSD-2 lacks the explicit patent grant that Superset's Apache-2.0 carries, a theoretical distinction with negligible weight for internal analytics.
4. Market Landscape
🏢 Proprietary Incumbents
- Mode: The SQL-first collaborative analytics incumbent (acquired by ThoughtSpot); teams move to Redash to escape per-seat pricing and keep query metadata in-house.
- Looker: Google Cloud's enterprise BI-modeling platform; organisations adopt Redash when they want SQL-driven dashboards and alerts without Looker's platform licence and ecosystem lock-in.
🤝 Open Source Ecosystem
- Metabase: The no-SQL alternative for non-technical teams; Redash is the choice when analysts want to write SQL directly.
- Apache Superset: The heavier, foundation-backed platform with a semantic layer and 40+ chart types; Redash trades that depth for a lighter query-and-alert workflow.