# Share an Amazon QuickSight Dashboard Without an AWS Account

Canonical: https://commareports.com/share-quicksight-dashboard
Published: 2026-09-08

> QuickSight readers need an identity and a per-reader charge. Publish a snapshot to Comma so stakeholders get the numbers at a URL, with no IAM and no seat.

# Share an Amazon QuickSight dashboard without an AWS account

QuickSight's sharing model assumes the reader is an AWS identity. To show
somebody a dashboard you provision them in IAM Identity Center or QuickSight's
directory, attach the right permissions, and pay for a reader — all of it
durable infrastructure, for a person who wants one number every Monday.

The escape hatches are real but heavy. Anonymous embedding
(`GenerateEmbedUrlForAnonymousUser`) is genuinely the right tool if you are
building embedded analytics into a product. As a way to email the ops lead this
week's figures, it means running a web application whose only job is minting
short-lived URLs.

So most teams screenshot the dashboard.

## Publish a snapshot

QuickSight has a first-party export API:

```bash
aws quicksight start-dashboard-snapshot-job \
  --aws-account-id "$ACCOUNT_ID" \
  --dashboard-id weekly-ops \
  --snapshot-job-id "run-$(date +%s)" \
  --user-configuration '{"AnonymousUsers":[{"RowLevelPermissionTags":[]}]}' \
  --snapshot-configuration '{
    "FileGroups":[{"Files":[{"SheetSelections":[{"SheetId":"sheet1","SelectionScope":"ALL_VISUALS"}],
                            "FormatType":"CSV"}]}],
    "DestinationConfiguration":{"S3Destinations":[{"BucketConfiguration":{
      "BucketName":"'"$BUCKET"'","BucketPrefix":"snapshots/","BucketRegion":"'"$REGION"'"}}]}}'
```

Poll `describe-dashboard-snapshot-job-result` until it completes, pull the CSV
from S3, render it, and publish:

```bash
aws s3 cp "s3://$BUCKET/snapshots/weekly-ops.csv" - \
  | python3 render_table.py > report.html

curl -fsS -X POST "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html report.html \
        --arg t "Weekly ops — $(date +%F)" '{title: $t, html: $html}')"
```

`FormatType` also accepts `PDF`, which is right when the visual layout is the
point. CSV is right when the reader will want to check or reuse the numbers —
and you can attach it as an asset alongside a rendered table so they get both.

Always put the snapshot date in the title. An undated dashboard export is how a
stale figure ends up in a decision.

## Keep it current

```bash
# EventBridge → Lambda, or any scheduled CI job
# …run the snapshot job, fetch the CSV, render report.html…

curl -fsS -X PATCH "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports/$REPORT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html report.html \
        --arg t "Weekly ops — $(date +%F)" '{title: $t, html: $html}')"
```

One report id, PATCHed weekly. The link you sent in March still shows current
numbers in November, and the revision list is a history QuickSight itself does
not keep — the dashboard shows today's data and nothing else.

See [scheduled HTML reports](/features/routines/scheduled-html-reports).

## Access, and what you are not granting

Reports are private by default:

- **Domain-gated** — anyone at `partner.com`. The usual right answer for an
  external stakeholder: no AWS identity, no seat, revoked when they leave.
- **Named reviewers** — for a narrow, sensitive distribution.
- **Team** — for internal readers who are not QuickSight users.

See the [sharing model](/docs/sharing).

The important property: a snapshot grants no access to the underlying dataset,
the SPICE capacity, or the data source. The reader gets results. Adding a
QuickSight reader grants access to a live query surface, which is a much larger
thing to hand out.

## What review adds

- **Anchored threads** on a figure, so "does this include the EU region?" is
  answered on the number — see [commenting on HTML](/comment-on-html).
- **Revisions**, so a restated number has a visible history.
- **No per-reader charge**, and no identity to deprovision later.

## Limits

- **Entry HTML: 5 MB.** Assets: 25 MB per file, 250 MB and 500 files total.
- **60 requests/minute per token.**

## Try it

Comma is free — unlimited reports, unlimited commenters, unlimited revision
history.

**[Publish a snapshot →](https://commareports.com/)**

### Related

- [Share a Power BI report](/share-power-bi-report) · [Share a Tableau dashboard](/share-tableau-dashboard)
- [Share a Looker Studio report](/share-looker-studio-report) · [Share a Metabase dashboard](/share-metabase-dashboard)
- [Share a Redash dashboard](/share-redash-dashboard) · [Weekly analytics digest](/features/routines/weekly-analytics-digest)