OrcaSheets makes data analysis feel immediate. Instead of building dashboards or writing queries, you can just ask a question in plain English and get an answer instantly. It removes a lot of friction and makes data actually usable in day-to-day decisions.
What stands out is how fast and natural the experience feels — it’s more like having a conversation with your data than using a traditional analytics tool. No SQL, no back-and-forth, just quick answers when you need them.
The performance is impressive, especially on large datasets, which is not something you see often.
The local-first approach is also a big plus for data security. Keeping data on your own machine instead of sending it to the cloud makes it much more reliable for sensitive use cases.
Hey Product Hunt! 👋
I'm Mayur, co-founder of OrcaSheets – a local-first analytics tool that lets you query any dataset in plain English. No SQL, no cloud uploads, no waiting on anyone. Just ask your data a question and get the answer instantly.
The backstory
I've been in tech long enough to watch everything become fast. Web pages, video calls, deployments, money transfers – all instant now. But when I moved into data analytics and engineering, I noticed something weird. Analytics was still slow, and nobody seemed to mind? Dashboards take weeks to build, questions go into a queue, answers come back stale, and decisions get made on gut feel because the data just wasn't ready in time.
Somewhere along the way, we all just...normalised waiting. And that started bothering me, like...A LOT!
The person expected to take risks and move fast is the same person forced to wait the longest for answers. The moment someone in a meeting says, "let's check and get back," momentum dies, curiosity dies, and the decision gets made without data anyway.
My co-founders and I built @OrcaSheets to fix that.
Here's what makes it different:
⚡ Instant answers in plain English: Ask "what were our top 10 products by revenue last quarter?" and get the answer in seconds. And no, I'm not talking about a chart you have to interpret. An actual answer.
🔒 Your data never leaves your machine: OrcaSheets is local-first. Everything runs on your hardware. No cloud uploads, no third-party servers touching your files. If you're in finance, healthcare or anywhere data sensitivity matters, this was built for you.
📊 Handles massive datasets: We're not talking about toy spreadsheets. OrcaSheets processes billions of rows without slowing down. Most AI tools choke or silently sample your data. We don't.
🧠 Context-aware intelligence: It understands your column names, data types and relationships between your tables. No hallucinated numbers or false confidence.
💸 No per-seat pricing, no cloud compute bills: You already own a powerful machine. Why are you still paying per user, per query, per month for analytics that loads slowly anyway? OrcaSheets runs locally. Pay once, ask as many questions as you want.
Who it's for:
🏭 Ops managers who need production metrics without filing an IT ticket
💰 Finance teams running last-minute analysis before a board meeting
🛒 Retail analysts digging through thousands of SKUs for patterns
📈 Startup founders who need answers but can't afford a data team yet
🧑💻 Anyone who's ever said "can someone pull this data for me?" and waited days
Where we're taking this
We believe speed changes behavior. When analytics becomes instant, people experiment, explore, stop waiting for permission to be curious. We're not just building a faster tool. We're changing the tempo of decision-making.
We're a team of three co-founders – @yash_gandhi3,@navdeep_agarwal and me – and we believe analytics shouldn't feel like filing a support ticket. If insight takes days, instinct wins. We built @OrcaSheets so data wins instead. Take that, "let's check and get back!"
I'll be right here in the comments all day. Tell me your worst analytics horror story, ask me anything about OrcaSheets, or just say hi. Let's talk. 🙌
PicWish
@yash_gandhi3 @navdeep_agarwal @mj_jadhav213 Nice work Mayur and team! 💡 How does performance compare for Parquet vs raw CSV when hitting that 1B row limit?
Chatscout by Zevi
Curious how this handles larger datasets locally. What kind of performance can someone expect when working with millions of rows on a standard work laptop?
@hiya_chaplot1 Great question! Short answer: it handles billions of rows surprisingly well on standard hardware - we're saying within seconds.
Since everything processes locally, there's no network latency eating into your query time. On a typical work laptop (8GB RAM, i5-ish), you'll get near-instant results in seconds on most queries across million-row datasets. We've built the engine to stay efficient even on modest machines.
Want to throw a specific dataset at it? We'd love to hear how it performs for your use case!
In the meantime, here's a visual proof: Billion Rows Challenge
Great work on building this, team! Curious — how does Orcasheet compare to traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel? Would love to understand where the local-first approach really shines!
@pardeep_singh0019 Great question! Here's how we think about it:
Most teams are working with well under a billion rows. For that, you simply don't need the cloud. OrcaSheets processes everything locally at 10x less cost, faster, and your data stays completely private on your machine.
With tools like GA and Mixpanel, your data lives with them. That's vendor lock-in. With OrcaSheets, your data stays with you. Always.
And there's no per-seat pricing. Your whole team gets access without costs scaling with every new user.
Check it out at orcasheets.io.
ChatPal
Looks powerful - congrats! What data sources can you use? Do you have link to integration docs?
@daniele_packard Thank you, Daniele! We connect to all major databases, CSVs, TSVs, Excel files, and APIs. So pretty much wherever your data lives, you can plug it in and start querying in plain English.
We don't have standalone integration docs just yet, but you can get all the info at orcasheets.io. Let's connect and we'll get you onboarded! :)
This is awesome. Which industries will this really transform?
@matusjon Hi! The short answer: anywhere data is stuck behind a technical barrier.
Government teams love the local-first approach because sensitive data never leaves their machines. DTC and e-commerce brands use it to dig into sales, inventory, and customer trends without waiting on a data team. Fintech and healthcare teams get the privacy guarantees they need while still moving fast on analytics.
But we keep getting surprised by new use cases every week. That's the fun part. Check it out at orcasheets.io!
On-machine analytics without cloud dependency does sound really interesting. Would love to understand some of the experiences around the decisions in choice of tech stack.
And all the best!
@nachiketk Thanks, Nachiket. Really appreciate the kind words! The local-first approach was a deliberate call from day one. We wanted users to have full control over their data without worrying about it leaving their machine.
Would love to get into the tech stack details with you. Let's connect and we can walk you through the decisions behind the architecture.
How does OrcaSheets handle real-time data updates or integrations with common tools like Excel, Google Sheets, or databases?
@abhijeet_jadhav5 Great question. We connect directly with Excel, Google Sheets, CSVs, TSVs, and all major databases. You can connect your data source and start querying in plain English right away.
For real-time updates, your queries always run against the latest version of your connected data. And since everything processes locally on your machine, it's fast and your data stays private.
Head to orcasheets.io to see it in action :)