Can I code this? A Business Intelligence Dashboard
A handful of fixed charts pulling from your own database is a genuinely bounded weekend build. Tableau's real product — a general query builder for any data source at any scale — is a much bigger, more open-ended problem.
Borderline
Effort: a weekendRunning cost: $0/mo to start
Why CanICodeThis says Borderline
A dashboard with a few fixed charts pulling from your own database is standard charting work
For one data source and known reports, hardcoding the queries is a real weekend project
Basic filters (date range, category) are straightforward query parameters
The parts that'll cause problems
A general drag-and-drop query builder working against any data source and schema is a much bigger, open-ended engineering problem than fixed dashboards
Performance at real large-scale data volume needs serious query optimization
Connecting to many different data source types each need their own connector
How I'd build this
frontend
Next.js
database
Supabase
hosting
Vercel
MVP scope
A handful of fixed charts hardcoded against your own database
Basic date-range and category filters
Simple login for the team
Postpone to v2
A general drag-and-drop query builder
Multiple data source connectors
Scheduled email reports
What it actually costs to build
AI agent — with a subscription (Claude Pro/Max, Cursor, etc.)
$0 marginal
AI agent — pay-per-use API, no subscription
$43–$86 one-time
Hosting, once it's running
$0/mo (free tier)
Domain name, if you want your own
~$12/yr
Existing tools solving a similar problem typically run $28–$75/mo — see how they compare below.
The build prompt
Build me a fixed dashboard: a handful of charts hardcoded against my own database, with basic date-range and category filters. Skip a general query builder — a fixed set of known reports is genuinely achievable; a platform for arbitrary data sources is a much bigger, different product.