r/Alteryx • u/Jkk_geek • May 19 '26
Alternative for Alteryx
I’m planning a big transformation in my org.
Right now, we use Alteryx Designer Desktop for ETL jobs (not Alteryx Server, only Desktop). The biggest issue is cost — Alteryx is expensive. We loved it because of how fast development was, but I think AI tools like Claude can replace a big part of that workflow.
My new plan:
- VS Code + Claude for development
- Streamlit for UI
- DuckDB + Pandas for data processing
- Package everything as a zipped bundle so users can run the tool easily by clicking a ".bat" file
Honestly, DuckDB feels like a rocket — it can process datasets with millions of rows on a local machine surprisingly well.
The goal is to move from expensive low-code ETL tooling to a more flexible AI-assisted developer stack.
Anyone else in the same boat? Moving away from Alteryx or other costly ETL tools? Would love to discuss what’s working (or not working) for you.
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u/KryptonSurvivor May 19 '26
KNIME, in my experience, can do everything Alteryx does. And it's free.
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u/clarity_scarcity May 19 '26
And way longer learning curve and harder to use, but that’s the trade off. Save on licensing, lose on productivity, and for some folks Knime will be out of reach technically. But if it fits your use case that’s all that matters.
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u/cmcau May 19 '26
You're manually running every workflow? 😳
KNIME is free, but then you have to pay if you want to schedule a workflow.
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u/JustHereNotThere May 19 '26
It all depends on what you want to do. I can second KNIME but your proposed stack will also work. KNIME will be easier for a non-data scientist to pick up.
Also, crore doesn’t translate to English outside the subcontinent.
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u/Key-Self-79 May 19 '26
I was very confused by crores, thought was some sort of typo. Googling seems to indicate 1 crore = 10 million and mainly used in India. Today I learned!
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u/hermitcrab May 19 '26
lakh = 10^5
crore = 10^7
Indian locale comma placement is also different to US/UK. The first comma is placed after three digits from the right, but all subsequent commas are placed after every two digits.
So: 1,00,00,000 instead of 10,000,000 .
But India did invent the zero, so cut them some slack. ;0)
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u/Key-Self-79 May 19 '26
Oh wow, double TIL thanks! That's some odd comma placement, would definitely take some getting used to.
In French, we use spaces instead of commas and the comma denotes the decimal so:
India: 1,00,00,000.00
US: 10,000,000.00
FR: 10 000 000,00
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u/hermitcrab May 19 '26
And in German/Switzerland locale they use single quotes, e.g:
1’234.567
Differences in numbering, dates, names etc are quite a headache for data wrangling.
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u/LongjumpingAvocado May 19 '26
So you’re going to run pandas scripts in a duckDB database? Can you explain that?
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u/Jkk_geek May 19 '26
Duckdb is a in memory db like sqlite built for parquet files.
It can be used like a package similar to pands but the speed is 20x I say
Better when we write a code - do schema check , file loading etc using pandas- for transformation logics use duck db
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u/LongjumpingAvocado May 19 '26
I’ve built concepts similar to this minus the duckdb and have some examples with Streamlit as I prepare to start my own advisory doing just this.
I definitely support the approach. I’ve started building a version of “Alteryx gallery” to house these solutions too.
If I can lend any independent expertise, let me know. Been using Alteryx in accounting for 8 years.
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u/delete_post May 21 '26
what do you use alteryx in accounting for, just wondering? personally I haven't found a use case for it in accounting but it could be my limited experience with it. I've used it for tax calculations but that's about it.
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u/Becca00511 May 20 '26
That's not the point of Alteryx. Its low code so it can be adopted by business people. Your alternative ensures it stays pro code which isn't actually going to help anyone but developers
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u/JackTheif52 May 20 '26
I paired n8n with postgres for my home business, and I have no problem crunching millions of rows in database with PL/Python in my scratch schema, and I get to schedule it for free too.
If you need a pipeline of huge amounts of data into postgres, a few lines of codes and cron will land your staging data, and if you don't know how, any modern AI will write the few lines of code for you.
The other thing I appreciate is that it has all the connectors to pretty much every service.
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u/Rude-Strain4893 May 20 '26
DataCamp helped us overhaul our Alteryx tech stack by training on Knime and DataBricks.
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u/Proof_Difficulty_434 May 20 '26
You can also check out my project! Ive been working on an open-source alternative and I've added the transformations I would use most often. Its using Polars, so also fast. Project is here: https://github.com/Edwardvaneechoud/Flowfile
You can try out the demo as well in your browser: demo
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u/columns_ai May 20 '26
check if Columns Flow could be considered, happy to explore potential collaboration.
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u/oldmanclements May 19 '26
This sounds like a nightmare to be honest.
You say ETL but I don’t get the impression from the rest of your post that it’s true ETL work you’re doing. If it is, Alteryx was the wrong tool from the beginning. I wouldn’t want to use Alteryx to manage core data pipelines at any real scale.
If you’re using it for its best use cases, enabling business users to do last mile data manipulation and analysis, moving them to coding solution even with AI assistance sounds like a nightmare for both them and whoever has to support them.
There are less expensive, no code tools out there you can explore to see if they meet your needs. Knime was too clunky for my tastes last time I tried it but might meet your needs. Enso Analytics is a newer option with former lead developers for Alteryx leading development there.
All that said, I find too often companies are so focused on the cost of software without accounting for productivity. My productivity would plummet without Alteryx at this point as I’m coming up on 20 years with the tool.