Rebuilt Labs

A free, open-source alternative to Chartsmith Cloud. They charge $39/mo.

$39/mo, crossed out. This one is

Free

Plot Bench

Charts from a CSV or a query, exported as SVG and PNG, rendered without a browser.

Plot Bench replaces Chartsmith Cloud.

Teardown

3 parts, wired together

  1. 01Observable PlotTODO — turns the data frame into the chart spec.
  2. 02resvgTODO — rasterises the SVG server-side for the PNG export.
  3. 03DuckDBTODO — reads the CSV or Parquet file and runs the query.

What it does

TODO — replace this placeholder description.

Plot Bench covers the one job Chartsmith Cloud charges $39/mo for, and stops there. It runs on your own machine or your own hosting, against your own key, so the running cost is whatever the underlying API charges and nothing on top.

TODO — describe the actual loop the tool handles here.

Run it yourself

Bring your own API key. Three commands from clone to running.

$ git clone https://github.com/rebuiltlabs/plot-bench.git$ cd plot-bench && npm install$ cp .env.example .env  # add your own API key

Open the repo

What I cut

Where it stops short of Chartsmith Cloud

  • TODO — no interactive dashboards; output is a static image.
  • TODO — no scheduled refresh or embeds.
  • TODO — seven chart types, not seventy.