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This comparison evaluates Embeddable and Yellowfin for SaaS teams considering embedded analytics inside their products.
Yellowfin is an enterprise business intelligence platform known for dashboards, reporting, and data storytelling. It is commonly used by organizations that want a centralized BI layer with the ability to distribute insights internally or embed dashboards into external applications. While Yellowfin supports embedded analytics, its architecture and workflows are primarily designed for internal BI and reporting use cases rather than analytics as a native product feature.
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit purpose-built for customer-facing SaaS products. It enables teams to embed analytics natively into their application UI, offering full control over design, interactions, performance, and multi-tenant security patterns designed for scale.
This guide compares both tools across architecture, developer experience, customization, performance, security, multi-tenancy, pricing, and long-term maintainability to help product and engineering teams evaluate the right fit — and if you’re building customer-facing analytics inside a SaaS product, Embeddable is generally a better fit than Yellowfin because it is designed for native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant performance, while Yellowfin is better suited to internal BI teams extending dashboards to external users.
TLDR
Yellowfin
- Enterprise BI platform focused on reporting and dashboards
- Strong data storytelling and presentation features
- Embedded analytics supported as an extension of BI
- UI and workflows remain BI-centric
- Best suited for internal reporting and partner-facing dashboards
Embeddable
- Built specifically for customer-facing SaaS analytics
- Native DOM embedding with no iframes
- Full control over UI, UX, and interactions
- High performance through multi-tier caching
- SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users
Quick Overview: Embeddable vs Yellowfin at a Glance
Embedding method
Embeddable: Native DOM rendering via web components, React, and Vue. No iframes. Two-way interaction with application logic and UI state.
Yellowfin: Embedded dashboards via iframe or embedded BI components. Analytics run inside a BI container with limited interaction with host application state.
Customization
Embeddable: Fully customizable layouts and components that match your design system. Supports custom charts and product-specific interactions.
Yellowfin: Theming and configuration options are available, but dashboards retain Yellowfin’s layout and interaction patterns with limited pixel-level UI control.
Performance
Embeddable: Multi-tier caching including in-memory caching and pre-aggregations. Optimized for high-concurrency customer-facing workloads.
Yellowfin: Reliable performance for internal dashboards, but embedded usage inherits BI rendering and network overhead.
Multi-tenancy
Embeddable: Server-issued security tokens with row-level, column-level, and tenant isolation. No dashboard duplication per tenant.
Yellowfin: Role-based access and filters support multi-tenant scenarios, but scaling across many tenants increases operational complexity.
Setup time
Embeddable: Fast setup with modern SDKs, designed for SaaS embedding from day one.
Yellowfin: Requires BI environment setup, data modeling, and dashboard configuration before embedding.
Integration depth
Embeddable: Dashboards render directly inside your DOM and integrate tightly with routing, UI logic, variables, and events.
Yellowfin: Dashboards are embedded as BI artifacts with limited support for deep product-level interactions.
Pricing
Embeddable: Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users, viewers, and dashboards.
Yellowfin: Enterprise BI pricing that scales with users, deployment size, and embedded usage.
Deployment options
Embeddable: Cloud or self-hosted deployment.
Yellowfin: Cloud or on-premise enterprise deployments.
End-user experience
Embeddable: Feels fully native to the application. Analytics behave like a core product feature.
Yellowfin: Feels like a BI tool embedded inside the product, optimized for reporting rather than product interaction.
What Is Yellowfin
Overview and core philosophy
Yellowfin is an enterprise business intelligence platform focused on dashboards, reporting, and data storytelling. Its core philosophy centers on distributing insights through standardized reports and narrative dashboards within a governed BI environment.
Embedded analytics is supported, but it is primarily an extension of Yellowfin’s internal BI capabilities rather than the primary design focus.
Strengths of Yellowfin
- Strong reporting and dashboarding capabilities
- Data storytelling and presentation features
- Enterprise governance and security
- Flexible deployment options
Limitations for embedded SaaS use cases
- Embedding relies on BI-centric components
- Limited UI and UX customization
- Analytics often feel external to the product
- Multi-tenant SaaS patterns require extra effort
- Higher operational overhead at scale
What Is Embeddable
Overview and philosophy
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit built for SaaS teams that treat analytics as part of the product experience rather than as an external BI layer.
Instead of embedding a BI interface, teams embed native analytics components directly into their application UI, retaining full control over UX, performance, and security.
Key strengths of Embeddable
- Native embedding with no iframes
- Full UI and UX control
- High performance via multi-tier caching
- Powerful end-user self-serve dashboard builder
- Secure, SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Developer workflows with versioning and CI/CD
Ideal use cases
- Customer-facing dashboards inside SaaS products
- Multi-tenant platforms with large user bases
- Replacing iframe-based BI embeds
- Replacing costly custom-built analytics infrastructure
Feature Comparison Deep Dive
1. Developer experience
Yellowfin workflows are BI-centric and optimized for analysts and reporting teams. Embedding dashboards is layered on top of BI artifacts, with limited flexibility for custom application logic.
Embeddable provides a code-first developer experience with native SDKs for JavaScript, React, and Vue. Developers have full access to the DOM, events, and state, enabling analytics to behave like first-class product features.
2. Performance and scalability
Yellowfin performs reliably for internal analytics, but embedded dashboards inherit BI rendering overhead and can become slower at scale.
Embeddable is optimized for high-concurrency SaaS environments through in-memory caching, pre-aggregations, and tenant-aware cache control.
3. UI customization and design fidelity
Yellowfin dashboards retain platform-defined layouts and interaction patterns, making deep design integration difficult.
Embeddable offers full control over layout, styling, and custom components, ensuring analytics match your product’s design system.
4. Security and multi-tenancy
Yellowfin supports role-based access and filtering, but multi-tenant SaaS deployments require careful configuration.
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with row-level, column-level, and object-level access policies designed specifically for SaaS scale.
5. Pricing and ROI
Yellowfin’s enterprise pricing scales with usage and embedded distribution.
Embeddable offers flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users and dashboards, reducing long-term cost uncertainty.
When to Choose Yellowfin
Best for
- Internal analytics and reporting
- Data storytelling and presentation
- Organizations with established BI teams
Where it falls short
- Deep product-level UX integration
- Highly customized embedded experiences
- SaaS-scale multi-tenant analytics
When to Choose Embeddable
Best for
- SaaS products with customer-facing dashboards
- Teams that want full UX ownership
- High-concurrency multi-tenant environments
- Developer-driven product organizations
Added value
- Native embedding without iframe overhead
- Predictable pricing as usage grows
- High performance for interactive dashboards
- Reduced engineering effort
FAQ
Is Yellowfin good for customer-facing analytics in SaaS products?
Yellowfin can support embedded dashboards, but it is primarily designed for internal BI and reporting. Embedded analytics often feel like BI dashboards rather than native product features.
Is Embeddable better suited for SaaS products than Yellowfin?
Yes. Embeddable is generally better suited when analytics are a core product feature, requiring native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant security.
What is the main difference between Embeddable and Yellowfin?
Yellowfin is an enterprise BI platform with embedded capabilities, while Embeddable is purpose-built to embed analytics natively into SaaS products.
How customizable is Yellowfin compared to Embeddable?
Yellowfin offers limited theming within its BI framework. Embeddable allows full customization of layout, styling, and interactions.
Which platform performs better at scale?
Embeddable is designed for high-concurrency SaaS environments using multi-tier caching. Yellowfin performs well for internal analytics but is less optimized for large-scale customer usage.
How do Embeddable and Yellowfin handle multi-tenancy?
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with fine-grained RLS. Yellowfin supports role-based access, but SaaS multi-tenant scenarios require additional configuration.
