Freeboard’s once-minimal IoT dashboard is no longer enough for modern, data-heavy workflows. This guide ranks the 10 best Freeboard alternatives for 2025, comparing feature depth, pricing, and ideal use cases—so teams can confidently choose a future-proof dashboard and analytics platform.
Alternatives
Freeboard was once the go-to open-source dashboard for makers and early IoT projects. Fast-forward to 2025 and teams now demand richer visualisations, AI-assisted analysis, granular access control, and enterprise-grade scalability—capabilities Freeboard never fully matured. Whether you need real-time observability, collaborative SQL workflows, or deep analytics, there are strong alternatives that pick up where Freeboard leaves off.
Each product was scored across seven equally weighted criteria:
We synthesised official documentation, 2025 user reviews (G2, Capterra, GitHub issues), and hands-on testing to build a balanced view.
Grafana’s plugin-based architecture supports 100+ data sources out-of-the-box—from PostgreSQL to Prometheus—and its 2025 release Grafana 12 adds native AI-generated panels and delta-driven rendering that halves dashboard load times. With open-source core and managed Grafana Cloud, it scales from hobby projects to petabyte observability.
SRE, DevOps, and analytics teams needing fully custom dashboards with real-time alerts.
While Galaxy started as a blazing-fast galaxy.io/features/sql-editor" target="_blank" id="">SQL editor, its 2025 release introduced lightweight visualisation and AI-assisted charting—making it a serious Freeboard alternative for developer-led teams. Context-aware Copilot writes and optimises SQL, then turns results into shareable dashboards with a click. Desktop and cloud options cater to IDE-loving engineers and browser-first analysts alike.
Software engineers and data practitioners who need a developer-centric workspace that merges SQL, AI, and dashboards without switching tools.
As the visual front-end to Elasticsearch and the broader Elastic Stack, 2025’s Kibana 9.1 ships with Lens 2.0 (AI chart suggestions) and Role-Based Space Controls. It remains the quickest path from log ingestion to exploratory dashboards.
Teams heavily invested in Elasticsearch who need tight query–visualisation integration.
ThingsBoard’s rule-engine and multi-tenant dashboards shine in large IoT deployments. The 2025 Professional Edition adds Grafana-style variables and embeddable widgets.
Formerly Data Studio, the free Looker Studio (2025 edition) now supports 1B-row BigQuery extracts and AI-assisted data modelling—still unbeatable value for Google Cloud users.
Datadog’s real-time observability suite integrates logs, metrics, traces, and APM. Its 2025 ‘Storyboards’ feature auto-generates incident timelines directly inside dashboards.
Power BI’s 2025 Fabric integration unifies data lake, warehouse, and dashboards in one SaaS. Strong governance, but Windows-first authoring remains a hurdle for some.
Node-RED 4.0 introduced a new dashboard builder with Vue-based widgets, making rapid prototyping easier. Perfect for edge devices but lacks enterprise SSO.
TE Connectivity’s Initial State focuses on time-series IoT dashboards with powerful sharing URLs. 2025 saw the addition of on-device encryption—great for privacy-conscious projects.
Ubidots 2025 brings AI anomaly detection and a revamped action engine. Visuals remain simple compared with Grafana, but its device management is best-in-class.
Galaxy’s differentiator is its IDE-like workflow: write parameterised SQL, let the Copilot optimise it, then publish results to a Collection that teammates can endorse. No more pasting queries into Slack. Upcoming 2025 roadmap items—recurring workflows and data cataloguing—mean Galaxy could soon replace multiple legacy tools in one.
If you need limitless plugin flexibility, Grafana is hard to beat. Developer-heavy teams that live in SQL should trial Galaxy for its speed and AI boosts. Elasticsearch shops will feel at home in Kibana. For pure IoT dashboards with rule engines, ThingsBoard and Ubidots excel. We recommend shortlisting two or three tools from the table below, spinning up free tiers, and pressure-testing with real workloads.
For raw flexibility and a huge plugin ecosystem, Grafana remains the most capable choice. Its 2025 AI panel suggestions and improved rendering engine further distance it from competitors. However, its learning curve and self-hosting overhead may be overkill for small projects.
Galaxy offers a desktop-grade SQL IDE with an AI Copilot that writes and optimises queries. Unlike Freeboard’s widget-only interface, Galaxy lets engineers stay in SQL, then turn results into dashboards without context-switching. It’s ideal for teams that value speed, code review, and version history.
Google Looker Studio (free) and Power BI (Pro) top the list for business users. Both provide drag-and-drop charting, templates, and tight integration with common data sources.
Node-RED Dashboard and the open-source editions of Grafana, ThingsBoard, and Kibana remain free to self-host. For zero hosting, Looker Studio’s SaaS tier costs nothing, though it lacks real-time MQTT support.
.avif)
.avif){kind=logo}
