About Metabase
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and embedded analytics tool meant for everyone in a company, not only analysts. People can ask questions about their data without knowing SQL, while an SQL editor is available for more complex queries. Written in Clojure, it connects to databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL.
Its features include interactive dashboards with filters, auto-refresh and custom click behavior, plus documents for long-form analysis that colleagues can comment on. An AI assistant called Metabot helps answer questions and write queries, and you can build your own AI agent against your data. Data Studio supports transforming raw data into analytics-ready tables and defining canonical metrics. Alerts and scheduled dashboard subscriptions go to email, Slack or a webhook, and a Library plus Git integration help version your work.
Metabase can also be embedded in your own product with components for charts, dashboards, a data browser and AI chat, and granular permissions work for internal teams and embedded customers. You can self-host it or use Metabase Cloud, which the project says includes support, backups, upgrades and a free trial. The repository license is listed as 'Other', so review its terms.
Key features
- Question builder that needs no SQL
- SQL editor for complex queries
- Interactive dashboards with filters and auto-refresh
- Alerts and scheduled subscriptions to email or Slack
- Embedding of charts and dashboards in apps
- Granular permissions for teams and customers
- Metabot AI assistance for queries
Good fit for
- →Self-serve analytics for non-technical teams
- →Embedding dashboards in a SaaS product
- →Scheduled data reports to Slack or email
- Tags
- business-intelligence
- analytics
- dashboards
- embedded-analytics
- sql
- data-visualization
- reporting
- self-hosted
Metabase: questions and answers
- What is Metabase used for?
- Metabase is an open-source BI and embedded analytics tool for exploring data, building dashboards and asking questions without SQL, self-hosted or through Metabase Cloud. It is a good fit for self-serve analytics for non-technical teams, embedding dashboards in a SaaS product and scheduled data reports to Slack or email.
- Is Metabase open source?
- Yes. Metabase is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at metabase/metabase and is written mainly in Clojure.
- Is Metabase free?
- Yes. Metabase is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $100 per month.
- Can I self-host Metabase?
- Yes. Metabase can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Metabase an alternative to?
- Metabase is an open-source alternative to Tableau, Data Studio, Sisense and Zoho Analytics. Other open-source alternatives to Tableau include Superset, Lightdash and DataEase.
- Is Metabase actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Metabase was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.63.19, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 50k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Metabase
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Superset
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Apache Superset is a Data Visualization and Data Exploration Platform
Apache-2.0vs Tableau★ 75k
Lightdash
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Agentic BI. Analytics at the speed of code ⚡️
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🔥 人人可用的开源 BI 工具,数据可视化神器。An open-source BI tool alternative to Tableau.
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A modern, scalable analytics system
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SaaS alternatives to Metabase
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Tableau
BI & Dashboards
Tableau is a business intelligence and data visualization tool for exploring data and building interactive dashboards.
SaaS
Data Studio
BI & Dashboards
Free Google tool, previously Looker Studio, for dashboards from many data sources
SaaS
Sisense
BI & Dashboards
Embedded analytics platform for building customer-facing dashboards
SaaS
Zoho Analytics
BI & Dashboards
Self-service BI tool from Zoho with dashboards and an AI assistant
SaaS
ThoughtSpot
BI & Dashboards
Search and AI-driven analytics for exploring business data in plain language
SaaS
Power BI
BI & Dashboards
Microsoft business intelligence tool for interactive dashboards, reports and data modeling
SaaS

