SAP HANA BI tools comparison
SAP HANA (High-performance ANalytic Appliance) is a multi-modal, in-memory, column-oriented database developed by SAP SE and widely used by enterprises. It was designed for hybrid transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) workloads on a single instance of data, eliminating a need in real-time data replication / data imports + separate DW for OLAP.
SAP HANA empowers business users to create their own reports and analyses without constantly relying on IT. However, this requires an appropriate BI tool that can be used as a self-service reporting interface to SAP HANA. It is important to use a direct (live) connection from the BI tool to the modeled data in SAP HANA: the BI tool sends a query to the HANA view, and HANA processes the request in real time. This ensures users are always seeing the latest data and avoids duplicating data outside of HANA's controlled environment.
| Product | Price | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metabase | Self-hosted: Free | Cannot be used: no SAP HANA connector. | |
| Apache Superset | Self-hosted: Free/OSS | No licensing costs, rich visualization gallery, SQL IDE. | Requires installation of "sqlalchemy-hana" driver. No dedicated vendor support. |
| SeekTable |
Cloud: $25/month (1 creator + 50 explorers)
Self-hosted: starts from $110/month (1 creator + unlimited explorers) |
Good for tabular reports, analysis with pivot tables and as a 'managed' self-service interface to the database. Advanced exports (to Excel chart/PivotTable). Custom HTML formatting. Affordable for embedding. | No dashboards UI builder (HTML knowledge is needed). |
| Microsoft PowerBI | $14 per user/month | BI Market leader, widely used. Large library of visuals. |
PowerBI Online requires on-premises data gateway.
Becomes expensive for many viewers, limitations related to tables/matrixes (like max 100 columns) and exports. Might be too complex for self-service reporting by non-IT users. No self-hosted version. Can be rather expensive for embedded analytics. |
| SAP Analytics Cloud | $36 per user/month
up to 20 users |
SAP native product, offers seamless integration with SAP HANA. BI with planning and predictive analytics. | Expensive for >20 users. No on-prem version. Embedded edition is not really suitable for SaaS apps. |
| Tableau |
$75 per creator/month
$45 per explorer/month |
The platform is highly regarded for its powerful and intuitive data visualization capabilities. Has self-hosted version (Tableau Server). | Expensive for many viewers. Can be very expensive for embedded analytics. |