Sisense is one of the leading embedded analytics tools in the market, with one major problem: you don't know what you're going to pay. While most traditional BI tools (Power BI, Tableau etc.) have transparent pricing, Sisense doesn't want to reveal theirs.
Sisense pricing starts at $10,000 per year and can go up into the millions. However, it's hard to explain how much this tool costs in just a few lines. Let's break it down in detail.
What does Sisense say about their pricing?
This business intelligence tool has a pricing page, where you are greeted with this form:
This is standard practice in the world of BI. Every embedded analytics project is different, and the pricing depends on your needs, the number of users, the volume of data, the number of data sources and other factors.
To sum up, Sisense software does not show their pricing publicly. If you don't want to fill out the form to get a quote, you can book a demo, or take Sisense for a test drive, which is a free 30-day trial.
Looking for a more affordable Sisense alternative? Try Embeddable today.
Our research on Sisense pricing
The price for this analytics platform depends on whether you choose the self hosted or the cloud hosted version of the platform. The minimum price you'll pay for Sisense is $10,000 per year for a small team with a handful of user roles, with costs going up to $60,000 and up per year for more complex data products.
Embedded analytics (OEM / white-label) pricing
Sisense’s embedded analytics (now often called Sisense for Product Teams) is designed for OEM and white-label scenarios, where analytics are embedded into a software product for end users.
In these cases, pricing is typically quote-based and can depend on usage rather than just named users, since the end-user base might be large or unknown.
Named user vs usage-based
For embedded use with potentially unlimited external users, Sisense may not charge per named user. One user explained that Sisense Web Access Tokens (WATs) (for embedding without individual user accounts) aren’t priced per seat – instead, Sisense charges based on usage metrics like the number of rows in your ElastiCube (Sisense’s analytic database for things such as data modeling) or server CPU cores.
In other words, an OEM license might be metered by data volume or compute power. This can get expensive for large deployments such as SaaS products where users have a large number of data questions, as high data volumes or concurrency drive up costs.
Example pricing – unlimited viewers
In one Reddit thread (~2018), a user reported paying $60,000 per year for a self-hosted Sisense deployment with 15 “full” user licenses and unlimited viewer users.
This scenario (15 internal users creating content, with unlimited external viewers consuming dashboards) is a typical OEM model. The cost was significantly higher than a same-era deployment with more limited internal use (for comparison, 35–40 internal users without unlimited external viewers was ~$35K/year – see later section).
This suggests Sisense charges a premium for the broad distribution rights needed in OEM cases.
Pricing flexibility and discounts
Sisense’s pricing for OEM is highly negotiated and there is no real minimum or maximum price - just what you agree on with the sales team. One user noted the model is “flexible and fits your business model,” but also very opaque.
Another commenter recounted that Sisense’s initial prices felt so inflated that they were offered an 85% discount off the list price, indicating that the “list” pricing was extremely high to begin with.
Heavy discounts like this underscore that OEM deals are custom – smaller startups might negotiate a lower rate with their sales team, whereas enterprise OEM deals can run large. It’s advisable to leverage competition (e.g. talk about a comparable business intelligence platform) to get Sisense to offer the product at a lower cost.
Infrastructure considerations
OEM customers often self-host Sisense for cost control, but Sisense now favors a Linux-based architecture. One long-term Sisense OEM user complained in 2024 that Sisense dropped Windows support, forcing a costly migration to Linux. They cited being charged about €50,000 just to transition to the Linux version with no free trial of the new version.
This suggests OEM customers on older setups might face upgrade costs. In general, hosting Sisense yourself is possible, but you’ll need to factor in infrastructure and possibly higher-tier support costs when embedding it into your product.
Sisense Cloud vs. self-hosted pricing
Sisense is available as a cloud-hosted SaaS (Sisense Cloud) or as self-hosted software (on your own servers or cloud). Deployment choice has a major impact on cost. Community feedback consistently shows that cloud hosting is significantly more expensive than self-hosting the Sisense platform:
Base pricing for 5 users: A commonly cited starting point is ~$10,000 per year for a self-hosted license (5 users), versus roughly $21,000 per year for 5 users on Sisense’s cloud
This baseline comes up in multiple forums and reviews. These figures are for Sisense’s core analytics platform (BI & Analytics Teams use case, presumably) but illustrate the roughly 2× price factor for cloud hosting.
Cost difference example
One Reddit user directly compared quotes: for the same number of users, the on-premise (self-managed) deployment was about $50K/year, vs. $75K/year for Sisense Cloud.
That’s a $20K (~40%) premium to have Sisense host and manage the environment. Companies with the IT resources to self-host often choose that route to save on license fees. However, cloud hosting may include additional usage capacity (and of course offloads maintenance to Sisense) – so the trade-off is cost vs. convenience.
Usage-based elements
Even with cloud plans, Sisense’s pricing isn’t purely per-user; it has usage components. Sisense uses a concept of “ElastiCubes” (its analytic data stores) and computing capacity as a pricing factor. Large data volumes or high query concurrency can increase the cloud cost beyond the base quote, especially in complex cases, e.g. with many data connectors.
In effect, Sisense Cloud has a usage-based pricing model layered on top of user license,– similar to how other modern BI tools charge for heavy usage.
Organizations with many dashboards, heavy data refreshes for predictive analytics, or many concurrent viewers might see higher quotes. For instance, a user noted that hosting costs “can get expensive if you have high concurrency or big ElastiCubes” – meaning a cloud-deployed Sisense could cost well be a smarter option if your usage is intensive.
Support and extras
The cloud vs. on-prem price gap also includes bundled services. Sisense Cloud subscriptions may include certain support levels, scaling features, or cloud infrastructure costs. Conversely, self-hosted licenses might require purchasing add-ons (like premium support, training, etc.).
One source indicated Sisense’s pricing involves “no-surprise” bundles that actually include things like a customer success manager, training, version upgrades, etc., rolled into the quote.
This might partially explain the higher fees, but those services can likely be negotiated out for a cheaper “software-only” price if not needed.
Sisense for BI & analytics teams (internal BI usage)
Sisense markets a package specifically for internal analytics teams, called Sisense for BI & Analytics Teams. This is essentially the core Sisense BI platform geared toward analysts and business users inside an organization (as opposed to OEM embedding). Pricing for this offering is typically per named user (or per capacity) on an annual license.
Sisense started out as a BI tool, then pivoted to focus on embedded analytics, so it makes sense that it still has some of that initial legacy architecture and features with it.
“Team” pricing vs OEM
In internal BI scenarios, Sisense is usually priced by the number of analyst/designer seats and viewer seats. The starting investment is still in the tens of thousands annually, even for small teams. As noted earlier, a **5-user Sisense license was about $21K/year (cloud) or $10K/year (on-prem)】 for basic internal use.
This would likely correspond to a Sisense for BI & Analytics Teams deployment for a small company. Another small startup reported hoping for a $3–5K BI tool, only to be quoted $21K/year by Sisense – well above their budget.
In short, Sisense’s entry point for internal BI is much higher than many SMB-focused BI tools.
Mid-size deployments
As user counts grow, costs scale up. Community examples from around 2018 (when Sisense had similar packaging) show mid-sized deployments: One organization with 35–40 users (self-hosted) paid about $35,000 per year and another with 15 power users plus unlimited viewers (likely a broader internal sharing scenario) paid $60,000 per year self-hosted.
Interestingly, the group with fewer creators paid more – possibly because the second deal included unlimited view-only users or additional capacity (akin to enterprise sharing rights). These numbers are a few years old, but they illustrate how a Sisense deployment for a department or mid-size company will land in the $30K–$60K/year range under typical licensing.
Large enterprise deals
At the high end, Sisense can become very expensive. Data from Vendr showed the average Sisense annual cost is ~$50,000, and deals have ranged from $14,000 up to $167,000 annually for big enterprises.
This reflects enterprise licenses with hundreds of users, possibly including OEM use or extensive support/training packages. Another source (AWS Marketplace) lists Sisense “Pro” at about $109K/year (likely a full-feature enterprise package), and an “Essential” tier around $40K/year.
These presumably correspond to larger user counts or more advanced features. It’s clear that for large teams, Sisense’s price can rival that of top-tier BI platforms like Looker or Tableau. In fact, some analysts note Sisense can be as expensive as (or even more than) Looker for comparable setups.
Negotiation and renewals
Sisense’s pricing model for BI teams is not only high but sometimes unpredictable. Users strongly recommend negotiating. One 2016 report mentioned a 400% price increase at renewal time – Sisense quadrupled the price when a customer’s initial term ended.
This indicates Sisense might offer an aggressive introductory discount and then attempt to raise rates later. Also, support level can affect cost: standard support is included, but things like 24/7 phone support or a dedicated CSM might cost extra if you need them.
Always clarify what your quote includes (e.g., support, training, version upgrades) so you aren’t surprised by additional fees. Given that one user got 85% off list in their quote, and others have seen steep renewal hikes, the pricing is highly variable. Being willing to walk away (or show alternative BI tools’ quotes) seems to help in getting Sisense to a manageable price for BI & Analytics Teams.
A tool built specifically for embedded analytics
Sisense is just one of the many ways to give actionable insights to your end-users. The company is not only secretive about their pricing plans, but users report that the actual pricing is very high compared to most of the competition.
Furthermore, Sisense was originally built for internal business intelligence, meaning that it’s architecture is not built from the ground up for customer-facing analytics. For that, you need something that gives you sub-second loading, embeds natively in your application, and gives you the control to make it feel like it’s really part of your application.
If you're looking for a better way to provide actionable analytics to your customers, Embeddable provides a tool built specifically for product and engineering teams to give you a truly remarkable end user experience, with a quick time-to-market.
With Embeddable as your embedded analytics tool, you get:
- A developer-friendly experience with easy custom embedding
- An unlimited range of data visualization choices
- Integrate seamlessly with your favorite data sources
- Security and compliance by design
- Excellent performance thanks to a performant data service and configurable caching layer
Get started with Embeddable and find out how its unique approach can help you deliver a truly remarkable end-user experience in a fraction of the time vs. a custom build.