SimpleKPI AI Core is the biggest release since we started building SimpleKPI in 2007.
It keeps the clear, no-nonsense way you already track KPIs, and it rebuilds everything around Kip, the AI at the center of SimpleKPI, based on exactly what you told us in our research. As far as we can tell, that makes AI Core exactly what the name says: the first KPI platform where the AI is the core. You talk to it, and it does the work.
Here's what that looks like day to day. Dashboards that build themselves from a plain-English request. Kip sitting right at the core, ready to update targets, build reports, or change a formula the moment you ask. Forecasts and anomaly alerts that keep an eye on your KPIs so you don't have to. In practice it feels like bringing a data analyst in-house: someone who watches your numbers, explains what changed, and updates the system for you, without adding a salary to the budget.
All of it sits behind one simple, predictable price. No per-seat games. No AI credits quietly ticking away in the background.
Plenty of tools bolt a chat window onto the side and call it AI. Core takes the opposite path: the whole platform is designed around Kip, so you can hand it the KPI work itself instead of being told how to do it. Best of all, we didn't guess what to build. You told us.
Why we built Core this way
"We didn't want to build what we assumed people needed. We wanted to build what they told us they needed. The clearest message from the research was simple. Our users did not want AI bolted on with a chat window and a story wrapped around it. They wanted it in the core of SimpleKPI, doing the actual work on their KPIs, not just talking about it. And they really did not want per-seat licenses or unpredictable AI credits getting between them and their teams. That one idea runs through everything in Core."
Stuart Kinsey, Co-founder, SimpleKPI
What's new in Core
- Pulse and Explore watch your KPIs for you, with live anomaly cards, forecasts, and target overlays. You asked for forecasting, alerts, and "just show me what changed." This is that.
- Kip, at the core of SimpleKPI, understands your data and, with your say-so, manages your KPIs directly: updating targets, building reports, changing formulas, and more.
- Guided setup, AI-assisted import, and template dashboards get you live in minutes rather than hours.
- A new interface built for usability, keeping the clear design you told us already works while adding themes and more ways to customize how your KPIs, dashboards, and views look and behave.
- One flat, predictable price, with Kip included and no per-seat or per-credit billing, because tight budgets and unpredictable AI bills came up again and again in your answers.
Pulse and Explore, so problems find you
The heart of Core is a product that stops waiting for you to go hunting for problems, because that is what you told us you wanted most.
Pulse is a live feed of trend and anomaly cards. It surfaces what has actually changed in your numbers, so a slipping metric finds you rather than the other way round. This one came straight from the top answer to "if SimpleKPI could do more of the work for you, where should it start?", which was spotting anomalies automatically.
Alongside it sits the KPI Score, which rolls every KPI into a single 0 to 100 health score right on your Home screen. One glance tells you how the business is doing, and when the score moves, you can ask Kip why.
Explore takes any single KPI and opens it up with target, forecast, and anomaly overlays in one view. The forecasting is built in and clearly labeled as a projection, not a promise, because you told us you wanted an honest line drawn between a fact and a best guess.
We've also deliberately pushed benchmarking into the background. Knowing you sit a few percent behind a peer average doesn't change anything on its own. What changes things is knowing why a number moved and what to do next, so Explore leads with the anomaly in context, and Kip walks you from the likely root cause to the fix, labeling each step as observed data, a calculation, or a recommendation.
On the dashboard side, you can start from templates instead of a blank page, or ask Kip to create one for you. You can apply one date range across every chart at once, and share a live view by public link with no login required.
For teams that want more depth, you'll find calculated KPIs, combination breakdowns that track two dimensions at once, and red, amber, green status thresholds ready to go, all built to work hand in hand with Kip and the way you already use SimpleKPI.
Say hello to Kip
Kip is the AI that SimpleKPI is now built around.
You can talk to Kip in plain English about your KPIs, dashboards, or reports. The difference is that Kip isn't parked on the side of the product as "an assistant." It's wired into the core, so it can actually run the workflows that keep your KPIs up to date. With your confirmation, Kip can update a target, adjust a formula, log entries, build reports, and apply dashboard templates or spin up new views.
In the research, natural-language querying was the single most-wanted AI capability. What people were clear they didn't want was more chat for the sake of it. They wanted to say what they needed in plain English and have the system get on with it inside the product. That is what Kip does. It's happy to explain what's going on if you ask, but its real job is to manage your KPIs when you tell it to.
Talking to Kip feels like talking to the AI assistants you already use every day, except this one has your KPIs in front of it and, with your go-ahead, can act on them. When we reviewed 15 KPI platforms in July, we found plenty of chat windows bolted onto the side, usually metered by credits or priced by the seat. What we didn't find was another KPI platform built around an AI that does the KPI work itself. That is why we call Core the first of its kind.
You don't just get commentary on your metrics. You get an AI that runs the work, priced so you're never nervous about using it.
Live in minutes, not hours
Getting started should feel like being shown around, not handed a manual. That's not just our opinion, it's what you told us in the survey.
New accounts open with a guided first run that lets you pick your own starting point: enter data by hand, upload a spreadsheet, connect an app, or begin from a template. In-app coachmarks then walk you along the natural path from KPIs to data entry to dashboards. If your data lives somewhere else, AI-assisted import can build brand-new KPIs straight from a spreadsheet you upload, while native connections to Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Xero, Search Console, Stripe, and Zendesk keep everything in sync on their own.
Guided setup scored highly in the research, with 76% saying it would be valuable and nobody calling it useless. So we rebuilt onboarding to live up to that.
AI you stay in control of
We built Kip to be accountable, not just clever, because the research made one thing very clear: transparency and control matter more than raw capability.
Every response from Kip is labeled for what it is: observed data, a calculation, an assumption, or a recommendation. You always know whether you're looking at a fact or a suggestion. Forecasts are flagged as projections, never dressed up as certainty. And Kip never changes anything on its own. It proposes, you confirm, then it acts. Add role-based permissions from Owner down to Viewer, passwordless login with passkeys, and enterprise single sign-on, and you get a KPI platform built around AI that behaves the way a real business needs it to.
One simple price, intelligence included
SimpleKPI has always been about clear value, and Core keeps it that way, because pricing came through as one of the biggest barriers in the research. You pushed back hard on two things in particular: per-seat licenses that punish you for adding the people who actually need access, and AI credit models that make next month's bill anyone's guess.
64% of respondents described their companies as price-conscious or very price-sensitive, and one theme ran right through the written comments:
"AI credits feel risky; we fear unpredictable bills and prefer capped models."
You also told us, by a three-quarters majority, that you judge tools on ROI and time saved, and neither of those lands if your team is afraid to invite a colleague in, or hesitant to use the AI because of what it might do to the invoice. So Core takes a different path. There is a single flat-rate plan, a 14-day free trial, and self-serve checkout. Kip is part of the package. You don't pay per seat, and you don't watch a credit balance drain every time you ask Kip to do something. When we reviewed 15 KPI platforms for 2026, SimpleKPI was the only one we could verify as including AI at a flat price with no credit allowance, token cap, or usage top-up.
Think of it as an in-house data analyst who never needs a pay review. Kip can dig into your KPIs, surface what matters, and carry out the changes, all inside a price you can plan for. No meter running in the background, and no surprise invoice at the end of the month. You know what you pay, and you know what you get.
None of this was guesswork
Every decision above traces back to what you told us. We sent a survey out across our user base, and 50 companies replied to 30 questions. We published the market half of those answers as The Predictability Problem, our 2026 research report.
Start with the foundation. Every one of the 50 companies rated the design of the app they were using at the time, the version Core has since replaced, as "excellent" or "good," and every one said it already fitted their workflow. So our first rule for Core was to protect what you liked and build on top, not tear it down. The comments came back the same way again and again: the interface is strong, and the biggest gap is automation, not design. That theme became a bit of a north star for us. The new interface follows it: the same clear design language, now with themes and more customization, while the real newness went into the automation you asked for.
From there, the wishlist pointed straight at the features you now see in Core. The most-wanted AI capability was automated insights and explanations of trends at 28%, with intelligent anomaly alerts just behind at 26% and predictive forecasting at 22%. Between them, forecasting and alerting account for 48% of first choices. That became Pulse and Explore. What the top three share is that they all ask for interpretation rather than generation: tell me what changed, tell me whether it matters, tell me what happens next. That is the job we built Kip to do, at the core of the product rather than off to the side. Natural-language querying, the pattern this industry markets hardest, took 16%, and automated report writing finished last at 6%. And 76% said guided setup would be valuable, with nobody calling it useless. That became the new onboarding.
Pricing and adoption came through just as strongly. You told us that per-seat models and unpredictable AI credits have become a real barrier to rolling KPI tools out across more teams. Core's flat, all-in price is our answer to that, and it's a big reason we think Core can become a daily habit rather than a specialist tool.
How you feel about AI
The AI question mattered most of all. Two thirds of you, 66%, are comfortable with AI in your KPIs or actively seeking it out, against 12% who are uncomfortable. The make-up matters more than the total: the largest single group, 40%, chose "comfortable as long as it is transparent and controllable", well ahead of the 26% who are unreservedly keen.
That condition is the whole story, and it came through in the comments as clearly as in the numbers: people are comfortable with AI as long as transparency and controls are in place. The top worries were accuracy at 32% and data privacy at 28%, not AI itself. That is exactly why Kip labels every answer, marks forecasts as projections, and always asks before it acts. On pricing the story was just as consistent: AI is welcome when it's clear, controllable, and doesn't turn into a line item nobody can predict. Hence Kip at the core, and a flat price around it.
You can see how Kip, Pulse, and the new dashboards fit together on the interactive product tour.
Where KPI software is heading
One answer led the rest. When we asked how you see tools like SimpleKPI over the next two to three years, half of you, 50%, expect them to become more central, used daily across more teams. Another 22% expect them to stay about as important and 12% expect consolidation into fewer platforms. Only 10% expect analytics to narrow to a handful of experts. Whichever way a company goes, more analytics or fewer platforms, both paths reward the same thing: a tool that earns its place in the working day.
That's the future Core is built for, where performance tracking moves from a weekly ritual to a daily habit, and Kip quietly handles the heavy lifting in the background, without anyone fretting about what it's doing to the bill. If you're new to SimpleKPI, Core is where you'll start. If you're already with us, you can move over whenever you're ready.
Start your 14-day free trial and let Kip build your first dashboard. Just tell it what you want to track.
Methodology
We invited our user base to take part in a 30-question survey covering design, usage, desired features, attitudes to SaaS and pricing, and views on AI. The figures here reflect everyone who responded, and all percentages are out of 50. A subset added free-text comments; those arrive in the exported data as summarised themes rather than individually attributed responses, so the comments above are presented as themes and not as customer quotations. Percentages refer to that group and are not projected to the wider market. Figures about SimpleKPI itself describe the application respondents were using during fieldwork, which Core has since replaced. A sample of this size is useful for direction rather than precise population estimates, and respondents are existing users rather than the general market. The seventeen market questions from this survey, with full response data and sample details, are published as The Predictability Problem.
Yes. Core is available now with a 14-day free trial and no per-seat or per-credit AI charges. New accounts start on Core, and existing customers can migrate whenever they're ready.
Pulse and Explore answer the demand for forecasting and anomaly alerts, the first choice of 48% between them. Kip answers the top request of all, automated insights and explanations at 28%, by doing that work at the center of the product. Guided setup and AI-assisted import answer the appetite for wizard-style onboarding, and the flat all-in price responds to the fear of unpredictable AI billing and per-seat friction.
No. They represent the SimpleKPI users who took part in our survey, a strong signal for what our own users want rather than a market-wide statistic.
