Questions buyers ask before choosing XLTable

Not for PivotTables. Excel for Mac cannot open Analysis Services (XMLA) connections — a Microsoft limitation that applies to SSAS and every XMLA server, not only XLTable.

Mac users have three options today: ask the same cubes questions in an AI chat (Claude Desktop and other MCP clients run on macOS and connect to the XLTable server), run Excel for Windows in a virtual machine such as Parallels or on a remote desktop, or use a Windows PC. A browser-based PivotTable that needs no Excel at all is on our roadmap.

XLTable stores no data and pre-aggregates nothing itself: every PivotTable action becomes one SQL query pushed down to your warehouse, so the speed is that of ClickHouse, Snowflake or BigQuery on your own data.

Three things keep it fast. A shared SQL result cache: when several users produce the same query it runs in the database once and the others get the result in milliseconds. Pre-aggregation-friendly SQL: the fact table is aggregated by keys first, so ClickHouse projections and StarRocks materialized views can answer typical PivotTable queries — on a one-billion-row ClickHouse table they went from seconds to well under a second. And the warehouse's own partition pruning, because filters reach the fact table directly.

In production, Lenta runs about 80 concurrent Excel users on billions of rows in ClickHouse.

Excel for Windows 2016 or later, including Microsoft 365, with the Analysis Services OLE DB provider (MSOLAP) — it ships with Office in most installations. Excel connects through the standard "From Analysis Services" dialog; there is no add-in to install.

Excel for Mac and Excel for the web cannot open XMLA connections (see the macOS question above). The XLTable server itself runs on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04+ recommended) or Windows 10 / 11 / Server 2019+.

No. XLTable is installed on your servers or in your own cloud account and runs its queries inside your warehouse. Nothing is sent to us, and air-gapped installations are supported.

In the Excel scenario every number stays inside your network. In the AI chat the cube's answers go into the assistant's context — connect a locally hosted model over MCP and nothing leaves either.

The server edition is licensed per named user: a seat is assigned to a person on their first request and recycled automatically after a period of inactivity, so concurrent connections are not counted. Plans start with Pilot for up to 10 users; large deployments switch to per-server licensing with unlimited users. Access for AI assistants (MCP) is a license option, not extra seats. Annual subscription or a perpetual license on request.

See pricing for the current plans.

XLTable Desktop is the free edition: a single-user OLAP server on your Windows PC. It listens on 127.0.0.1 only, keeps cubes as .sql files in your Documents folder, connects to any supported warehouse, and includes the MCP server for AI chat. No license, no admin rights, no time limit.

The paid server edition adds what a team needs: a shared cube catalog, multi-user access, row-level security, Active Directory and single sign-on. Cube files move from Desktop to the server unchanged.

ClickHouse, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, StarRocks, Trino, Greenplum and DuckDB. One cube definition, one set of metrics — Excel PivotTables and AI assistants read the same model.