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Metabase

Open source business intelligence and analytics

freemiumopen sourceverified Aug 24, 2026

Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and embedded analytics platform for teams that want self-service dashboards, SQL workflows, and customer-facing analytics without adopting a heavy BI suite. It supports visual querying, saved questions, alerts, database connectors, cloud or self-hosted deployment, and embedding paths that now require careful plan, permission, and license review.

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Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and embedded analytics platform for teams that need more people to explore data, build dashboards, and share answers without writing SQL for every request. Its visual query builder, saved questions, dashboards, alerts, subscriptions, and SQL editor make it useful for product, operations, support, finance, and leadership teams that have a curated data layer but want a lighter workflow than a full enterprise BI rollout.

The product can run self-hosted or in Metabase Cloud and connects to common operational and warehouse databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, MongoDB, and many others. The GitHub repository is active and currently sits around 47.9K stars, but GitHub reports the license as NOASSERTION and the raw license file states that source is variously licensed under AGPL and the Metabase Commercial License, so buyers should review deployment and enterprise-code terms rather than treating it as permissive-only OSS.

Metabase's embedded analytics documentation covers guest embeds, interactive/full-app embedding, JWT-style authentication paths, row/column security, permissions, SSO, white-labeling, caching, usage analytics, and auditing depending on plan. Public pricing now lists Open Source as free, Starter at $100/mo or $90/mo annually with the first five users included, per-user add-ons for internal and embedded users, and Enterprise custom pricing starting at $20,000/year. That makes Metabase a strong BI default, but production embedding still needs cost, security, and governance due diligence.

Pricing

Open-source BI and self-service analytics platform under the AGPL-3.0 license (~49k GitHub stars) for unlimited self-hosted users ($0 software license fee). Metabase Cloud & Self-Hosted commercial tiers include Starter ($85/mo with 5 users included, +$5/user/mo) for core BI and Metabase AI assistance; Pro (from $500–$575/mo with 10 users included, +$10–$15/user/mo) adding Granular Row/Column-Level Permissions (Sandboxing), SAML SSO, Audit Logs, and Whitelabeled Embedding; and custom Enterprise with dedicated engineer support, 1-day SLAs, SCIM provisioning, and air-gapped deployments.

full pricing breakdown →

Platforms

Self-hosted or Metabase Cloud; Java/Docker deployment; guest and interactive embedding with plan-dependent permissions/SSO controls

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Comparisons

Metabase vs DataEase — Open-Source BI: SQL Simplicity vs Dashboard-First Workflow

Metabase and DataEase both deliver self-hosted, open-source business intelligence, but they cater to very different developer instincts. Metabase leads with a SQL-first, embed-friendly architecture and broad ecosystem; DataEase wins on drag-and-drop dashboard authoring and broad source connectivity. The right choice depends on whether your team writes queries or configures dashboards.

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Metabase vs Grafana — Open Source Analytics Head to Head

Metabase and Grafana are both leading open-source analytics platforms but serve fundamentally different use cases. Metabase excels as a business intelligence tool where non-technical users explore data through visual query builders and share interactive dashboards. Grafana dominates operational monitoring with real-time time-series visualization, alerting, and deep integrations with metrics backends like Prometheus and InfluxDB. Understanding their distinct strengths is essential for choosing the right tool.

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FAQ

What is Metabase?

Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and embedded analytics platform for teams that want self-service dashboards, SQL workflows, and customer-facing analytics without adopting a heavy BI suite. It supports visual querying, saved questions, alerts, database connectors, cloud or self-hosted deployment, and embedding paths that now require careful plan, permission, and license review.

Is Metabase free?

Metabase offers a free tier alongside paid plans. Open-source BI and self-service analytics platform under the AGPL-3.0 license (~49k GitHub stars) for unlimited self-hosted users ($0 software license fee). Metabase Cloud & Self-Hosted commercial tiers include Starter ($85/mo with 5 users included, +$5/user/mo) for core BI and Metabase AI assistance; Pro (from $500–$575/mo with 10 users included, +$10–$15/user/mo) adding Granular Row/Column-Level Permissions (Sandboxing), SAML SSO, Audit Logs, and Whitelabeled Embedding; and custom Enterprise with dedicated engineer support, 1-day SLAs, SCIM provisioning, and air-gapped deployments.

Is Metabase open source?

Yes — Metabase is open source.

Is Metabase still maintained?

Yes — Metabase is active. Its listing was last verified on August 24, 2026.

What are the best Metabase alternatives?

The top editor-verified Metabase alternatives are Grafana, DataEase.

How does Metabase score in our review?

Our hands-on review scores Metabase 85/100 overall, based on speed, privacy, and developer-experience testing.