Evidence.dev
Analytics as Code
Self-hosted business intelligence where every dashboard is a SQL file in a Git repo — versioned, reviewed, deployed like software. No more BI tool licensing fees or untracked dashboard sprawl.
The Analytics Pipeline
Every dashboard is a file. Every change is a commit. Deploy analytics the same way you deploy code.
Why It Matters
Evidence vs Traditional BI
| Feature | Evidence.dev | Power BI / Qlik |
|---|---|---|
| Version control | ✓ Full git history | ✗ Shallow or none |
| Code review flow | ✓ Pull requests | ✗ Not applicable |
| Local dev preview | ✓ npm run dev | ✗ Edit in prod only |
| Query language | ✓ Standard SQL | ~ DAX / proprietary |
| Self-hostable | ✓ Yes, fully | ✗ Cloud dependency |
| Per-seat cost | ✓ $0 (open source) | ✗ $10–$40/user/mo |
| Drag-and-drop UI | ~ Markdown + SQL | ✓ Yes, rich GUI |
The Problem with Traditional BI
Power BI and Qlik solve a real problem: they let non-engineers build dashboards.
But they introduce a different problem — your analytics live inside the tool,
not in your codebase. You can't git diff a Power BI dashboard.
You can't open a pull request to add a new metric.
When someone changes a report, there's no audit trail. Just a different number on screen. That matters when you're making decisions based on those numbers.
What I Learned
Treating dashboards like code doesn't make them harder to build. It makes them harder to break.
The biggest shift is cultural, not technical. When analytics live in a Git repo, they become part of the engineering workflow — reviewed, tested, versioned.
Evidence's Markdown-based approach also makes it natural to embed context alongside charts. A dashboard isn't just a number — it's a number with a story. Evidence makes that story easy to write and easy to diff.