Why 'Scheduled Dashboards' Are Broken (And What We Built Instead)

Scheduled Dashboards Are Broken

We learned this the hard way.

A few years ago, we moved all our data infrastructure to BigQuery. It felt like the right move — serverless, fast, scalable. Soon after, we brought in a small team of analysts to help us explore customer behavior and build dashboards.

Everything looked smooth... until our CEO checked the billing dashboard a month later.
We had racked up a $10,000 invoice from Google.

No huge traffic spike, no ML jobs gone rogue — just a few dashboards and exploratory analysis.

That’s when we realized what had happened:
Most of the compute was wasted on scheduled dashboard refreshes, even when the underlying data hadn’t changed.

The Problem With Scheduled Refreshes

Scheduled dashboards sound smart — query your data every X minutes, keep things “fresh.”

But here's what actually happens:

• Dashboards run queries on unchanged data
• You're billed for every compute cycle, even when there's nothing new
• Users keep clicking “Refresh” because they don’t trust the schedule
• And worst of all — you still miss things when data changes between intervals

It’s a pattern that doesn’t scale with modern pricing models or expectations.

We were paying for answers we already had.

So We Built Fastero

Instead of running everything on a schedule, we flipped the model.

Fastero is built around data triggers.

It doesn’t guess when to refresh — it knows when something has changed, and only then takes action.

That means:

• Dashboards update in near real time
• No more refresh buttons
• No more wasteful schedules
• Just clean, accurate, timely insights

What Triggers Can Do

With Fastero, you can define exactly what matters:

• A new row in your billing table
• A user crossing a usage threshold
• A key metric dropping below target

Fastero watches for those events. When they happen, it can:

• Refresh your dashboard
• Send an alert to Slack or email
• Run a notebook or custom logic
• Or chain into other tools and workflows

Even if you’re not logged in — Fastero stays on.

Works With the Tools You Already Use

We made sure Fastero integrates with the data stack you already rely on:

• BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and others
• No need to rewrite pipelines or restructure storage
• Just plug it in, and your dashboards instantly become more intelligent

Stop Polling. Start Listening.

That surprise BigQuery bill wasn’t just a wake-up call — it was a turning point.
We realized we needed analytics to be smarter, not noisier.

If you’re also tired of:

• Refresh buttons
• Cron jobs that miss changes
• Overpaying for unused compute
• Or dashboards that feel stale before you even open them

Then give Fastero a try.

👉 Start your free 30-day trial — no credit card required, usage limits apply.

Let us handle the listening. You focus on the decisions that matter.

— The Fastero Dev Team