Launching today
ReportBurster: “Batteries‑Included” BI
The Crystal Reports Alternative You've Been Waiting For
1 follower
The Crystal Reports Alternative You've Been Waiting For
1 follower
ReportBurster = report generation + report bursting / distribution + self‑service portal + embeddable analytics. Today, most teams stitch together a messy stack—Crystal Reports for generation, Power BI for dashboards, a separate tool for bursting and automation, and custom portals for access. ReportBurster replaces that entire workflow with a single open‑source platform that delivers end‑to‑end reporting, automation, and analytics without relying on SaaS lock‑in.
Hi everyone — I’m the maker of ReportBurster. Thanks for checking it out!
ReportBurster = report generation + report bursting + a self‑service portal + embeddable analytics — all in one self‑hosted platform.
This project grew out of my work on DocumentBurster, a report‑bursting tool that many teams used to automate distribution for Crystal Reports and other business software. Crystal Reports produced great “pixel‑perfect” documents, but distribution was limited, expensive, and the product itself is clearly aging.
While supporting DocumentBurster users, I kept seeing the same pattern — and it wasn’t just about bursting.
Most BI/reporting tools today only solve one slice of the workflow.
Some focus purely on generating reports. Others (like DocumentBurster) handle automation and distribution. Others do dashboards and analytics. And many of the modern BI tools are very SaaS‑oriented (Power BI, etc.), which makes self‑hosting difficult or impossible.
Teams were constantly stitching together 2–5 different tools just to build a basic reporting pipeline. It worked… but it was fragile, expensive, and full of glue scripts.
That’s what pushed me to build a complete, open‑source BI platform — something that doesn’t force you into those silos:
report generation only
report distribution only
dashboards/analytics only
SaaS only, even when your data must stay private
ReportBurster brings all of this together in one place, fully self‑hosted and extensible.
And because reporting can be… well, dull, I wanted to add a bit of magic. ReportBurster uses AI to help you understand your data, configure sources, and write SQL queries and automation scripts.
You still keep full control, but the tedious parts get faster and easier.
I’d love to hear what you think — what’s confusing, what’s missing, and what would make this more useful for your workflow.
I’ll be here all day answering questions.