Sisense is one of the more popular business intelligence software used by companies of all shapes and sizes. If you're looking for something for big data analytics, it's an excellent alternative to powerhouses like Tableau or Power BI.
Over time, it started focusing on the embedded analytics market, helping companies add data visualization capabilities to their apps. In a market demanding advanced analytics capabilities, AI and machine learning features, the ease of embedding, and much more, the question presents itself...
Is Sisense a good choice for your BI tool?
Additional reading:
What is Sisense?
Sisense is a business intelligence and data analytics platform that helps companies analyze, visualize, and embed data from multiple sources into dashboards, reports, apps, and workflows.
Sisense was founded in 2004 in Israel, focusing on Elasticube technologies. By the 2010s, they expanded globally and focused on companies that needed analytics capabilities but didn't have the technical manpower, such as data analysts, data scientists, engineers, and others.
In 2018, Sisense made a major shift, from being just another BI software company to a solution for predominantly embedded analytics, helping companies turn raw data into actionable insights.
In 2019, Sisense acquired Periscope Data, a tool popular among data scientists and engineers for SQL-based analytics. This allowed them to blend "code-first" analytics (for technical teams) with "no-code" BI dashboards (for business users who want to visualize key performance indicators).
After 2020, they started offering AI powered analytics. While they're not as AI-focused as some competitors (e.g., ThoughtSpot), they began offering tools such as AI-driven alerts, predictive modeling connectors, and natural language search.
Sisense product offerings in 2025
Sisense serves a wide range of business intelligence needs. Their offer provides flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities suitable for various organizational requirements.
Core features include:
- AI-powered insights: The platform leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate data analysis, providing predictive insights and natural language query capabilities. This empowers users to interact with data conversationally and derive actionable intelligence.
- Flexible deployment: Sisense supports various deployment models, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid setups, letting you access insights locally, in the cloud, on mobile devices, and more.
In 2025, the latest updates to Sisense's offer include:
- Centralized connection manager: Introduced to streamline data source management, this feature allows teams to create, manage, and share data connections securely from a single interface, improving collaboration and reducing setup time. It lets businesses connect large data sets for visualizations, from a variety of sources such as data warehouses, data lakes, and similar.
- Dashboard co-authoring: This functionality enables multiple users to collaboratively build and edit dashboards in real-time, fostering teamwork and ensuring consistency across analytical outputs.
- Analytical engine update: Sisense has made its Analytical Engine the default for new data models, offering improved query performance, accuracy, and support for advanced data modeling techniques like calculated dimensions and left joins.
Sisense embedded analytics platform
As we mentioned earlier, Sisense took a sharp turn and decided to transition from a generalist BI tool to one that enables businesses and end-users to analyze data in embedded dashboards.
This would make you think that Sisense works exceptionally well for building interactive dashboards in an embedded setting, but chronologically, Sisense is a BI tool first, and an embedded platform second.
This means that despite APIs and SDKs, the Sisense architecture is predominantly focused on traditional BI. Embedding dashboards into an app or website won't be too intuitive to your software development team. Customization is also fairly limited. Perhaps worst of all, performance can be painfully slow.
“Too slow in fetching data from the database if you are writing customized queries. The same query runs in the database within a second but Sisense takes 10 to 20 minutes or sometimes hours in execution.” - Source
The elephant in the room: Sisense pricing
BI tools are notorious for having complex, opaque pricing, and this one is no different. To find out more about Sisense pricing, you have to talk to their sales team. Depending on your business analytics needs, the number of users, data sources, and more, you'll get a different quote.
But the bigger problem is that Sisense can be prohibitively expensive, even when the lack of transparent pricing is put aside. You can expect to pay anything from $20,000 to more than $100,000 for Sisense.
Pricing is one of the most common reasons businesses look at Sisense competitors, as it tends to have enterprise prices without the enterprise product quality.
Who uses Sisense?
Sisense is a popular choice in companies across various industries. It seems to be popular in fields such as SaaS, logistics, healthcare, and finance.
Here are some of the bigger companies using Sisense to get actionable insights:
- Nasdaq – They use Sisense to power internal and client-facing analytics data visualizations.
- Philips Healthcare – Implements Sisense to improve data accessibility across business units.
- Air Canada – Uses Sisense for performance management and operational insights.
- NBC Universal – Applies Sisense to help internal teams analyze marketing and audience data.
- Verint – Leverages Sisense for customer engagement analytics and operational data.
- ZoomInfo – Uses Sisense to deliver embedded analytics to its own customers.
- Motorola Solutions – Implements Sisense to support field operations and internal reporting.
- Flexport – Applies Sisense in its logistics and freight management analytics.
- PSG (Professional Sports Group) – Uses Sisense for performance analytics and fan engagement data.
In general, companies that use Sisense (whether internally or for embedded use cases) fall into the enterprise category, likely for two reasons. They can afford the subscription, and they have the in-house manpower for advanced analytics.
Is Sisense the right business intelligence tool for me?
You need a competitive edge and want to add embedded analytics to your product offerings, helping your end-users make better business decisions. Here's a quick checklist to help you find out if Sisense is the right analytics platform for your needs.
If you answered “yes” to more than half of the claims below, Sisense may be a good fit for your needs.
1. Embedding needs
- I need to embed dashboards, reports, or visualizations into my product, app, or customer portal.
- I want full white-labeling and customization options for embedded analytics.
2. Deployment flexibility
- I want to choose between cloud, hybrid, or on-premises deployment.
- I need to meet specific data compliance, security, or hosting requirements.
3. Data complexity
- I work with large, complex, or diverse datasets (from multiple sources such as traditional relational databases) and I need support for strict data governance.
- I need a solution that can handle complex modeling, ETL, and mashups.
4. AI-driven insights
- I want access to AI powered analytics features like automated data discovery, predictive analytics, or natural language querying (e.g., asking questions conversationally).
5. Customization and extensibility
- I need API access, developer toolkits, and SDKs to build highly customized experiences.
- When building out data visualizations, I want to extend and modify dashboards beyond basic drag-and-drop builders.
6. Team collaboration
- My teams need to co-author, share, and manage dashboards securely.
- I want role-based access control and centralized data connection management.
7. Budget and internal resources
- I have a budget of $40,000–$100,000+ per year for BI tooling.
- I have (or plan to have) a technical team that can manage setup, customization, and ongoing maintenance.
8. Vendor approach
- I prefer working with a BI vendor that offers tailored, quote-based solutions rather than fixed plans.
- I’m comfortable engaging with vendor sales and success teams for implementation.
Wrapping up
Sisense may seem like a compelling choice if you take a look at it from afar. Upon a closer look, though, it sits in the gap between traditional BI tools that are excellent for internal data discovery (such as Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, or Looker) and platforms built exclusively for embedded analytics (like Embeddable). In the end, it does both internal reporting and embedded analytics okay, but it doesn't excel at either of them.
Instead of Sisense, why not consider a tool that was built from the ground up for embedded analytics? Embeddable is a developer-first tool for building lightning-fast customer-facing dashboards that don’t cost sprints of engineering time to implement.
Embeddable comes with a range of features your developers and end-users will love, such as...
- Lightning-fast dashboards
- Full control of the dashboard UX and UI
- Fast, secure, and easy embedding without iframes
- A headless architecture that allows you to import any chart from any library
- Row-level security, multi-tenant support, built-in semantic layer, configurable cache, React SDK, end-user self-serve and much more
The result is a beautiful, fast-loading user experience that fits neatly into your application’s UI, and your team's existing ways of working.
