Open source alternatives to Tableau

By GitHub stars it is Apache Superset, with 75,519 stars and a commit on 14 Nov. Choose Apache Superset when you want dashboards for every analyst without paying Viewer, Explorer or Creator seat prices on a yearly contract. Next come Metabase (50,317 stars) and Redash (28,883 stars).

Yes. The code of all 4 is public under Apache 2.0, AGPL 3.0 or BSD 2-Clause, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use Tableau for. Choose Metabase when you want to host it yourself and keep your data on your own server. Choose Kanaries when you want to explore data by dragging fields into charts inside Jupyter or RStudio, with a free Education plan.

3 of the 4: Apache Superset, Metabase and Redash. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

3 of the 4 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Apache Superset, Metabase and Redash. The quietest is Kanaries, last changed on 5 Sep. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

Apache 2.0 (2), AGPL 3.0 (1), BSD 2-Clause (1). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely. GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. Tableau's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.