Cube vs Ibis
Cube
cube.devIbis
ibis-project.orgSide by side
| Figure | Cube | Ibis |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $40/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Data Transformation Tools | 9.1 (#4) | 8.5 (#12) |
| Integrations | Listed data sources include Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Trino, Presto and AWS Athena. | The documented Python data integrations include pandas and Polars, with visualization tools such as matplotlib, seaborn, Plotly, Vega-Altair and plotnine. |
| Product | Cube is an agentic analytics platform built on a semantic layer for business users and AI agents. | Ibis is a portable Python dataframe library that provides one API for more than 20 data backends. |
| Security | Cube states that data is encrypted at rest, API access uses token-based security, and application traffic is encrypted over SSL/TLS 1.2. | The reviewed official pages do not state security certifications or compliance claims. |
| Support | Cube lists community support for Free, limited chat and email for Starter, and chat and email plus a dedicated CSM for Enterprise. | For help, the project points users to GitHub and Zulip, and says Voltron Data offers commercial support for Ibis. |
| Use cases | Cube Cloud supports internal business intelligence and embedded analytics. | The project describes Ibis use for exploratory data analysis, analytics, data engineering, machine learning and library development. |
Plans
In their own words
Cube
Cube is an analytics platform with a semantic layer that encodes governed business definitions for dashboards, embedded applications, and AI agents. Cube Cloud supports internal business intelligence and embedded analytics, while Cube Core is the open-source project alongside which the cloud platform is built. The Free plan includes a semantic layer IDE, workbooks, dashboard publishing, semantic model and workbook agents, and analytics chat. Listed data sources include PostgreSQL, Snowflake, ClickHouse, Databricks, BigQuery, MySQL, Oracle, Redshift, MongoDB, and Trino; integrations include dbt, Dagster, Prefect, Airflow, and Coalesce.io. Cube Core processes API requests using pre-aggregated data in Cube Store or raw data in connected databases. Cloud deployment options include a managed multi-tenant service on AWS or GCP, a VPC on AWS, GCP, or Azure, and a customer's cloud through BYOC. Cube lists a free plan, Starter at $40 a month per developer, and Premium at $80 a month per developer.
Ibis
Ibis is a free, open-source Python dataframe library that provides a consistent API across more than 20 query backends. It lets users compose SQL and Python dataframe code, bringing data engineering and data science workflows together. For local dataframes, Ibis uses DuckDB by default and also names Polars and DataFusion. The project describes a workflow that can start locally and move to remote execution by changing a single line of code.
Ibis supports and tests Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks Cloud, and Amazon Athena; support for those cloud backends could move to best effort if funding ends. Supported data formats include CSV, TSV, JSON, Parquet, Delta Lake, and Avro. Install Ibis with a supported backend using pip, conda, mamba, or pixi. One package distinction matters: the PyPI package named ibis is separate from ibis-framework, and the two cannot coexist in one Python environment because both use the ibis module name. Operation coverage varies by backend due to differences in SQL dialects and upstream support. The project recommends GitHub and Zulip for help, and Voltron Data offers commercial support.