Metabasevs
Tableau
Tableau: Visual analytics platform for business intelligence
Metabase
Fast analytics with the friendly UX
As of 30 August 2026, Metabase has a free plan and paid plans start at $90/month. Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that makes it easy for anyone to ask questions about data and get answers in the form of beautiful charts. Softwr lists it under Spreadsheets. Metabase is launched in 2014, available on Web, Self-hosted.
Overview
What Metabase does
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that makes it easy for anyone to ask questions about data and get answers in the form of beautiful charts and dashboards. No SQL required for basic analysis.
What people use it for
- Business intelligence and data exploration for non-technical users
- Embedded analytics for SaaS applications
- Self-service reporting and dashboard creation
- Integration with 40+ data sources including cloud warehouses
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Metabase.
- AI Service charges $3.75 per 1 million tokens (after 1M free tokens included)
- Transforms cost $0.01 per run after 1,000 included runs per month
- Advanced Transforms cost $0.02 per run after included allocation
- Storage overages start at $2 per 1M rows (1M rows free)
- All yearly plans offer 10% discount versus monthly, incentivizing annual commitment
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Metabase
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- MetabasevsLooker
Looker: Modern business intelligence platform by Google
- MetabasevsRedash
Redash: Connect and visualize your data
- MetabasevsFibery
Fibery: Connected workspace for product teams
Pricing
What Metabase costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Open Source
Free
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited questions and dashboards
- AI-powered query generation
- 20+ data sources
- Self-hosted only
Starter
$90 /mo
- Email and chat support
- $100/month standard monthly billing
- 20+ data connectors
- $6 per user/month after first 5 users
Pro
$517.5 /mo
- $575/month standard monthly
- Row/column-level permissions
- SSO
- Embedding (unlimited charts/dashboards)
- $12 per user/month after first 10 users
Enterprise
$20,000 /yr
- Dedicated success engineer
- 1-day support response SLA
- Air-gapped deployment
- Custom pricing available
Capabilities
Features
No-code Query Builder
SQL Editor
Interactive Dashboards
Alerts
Embedding
PostgreSQL
Integration with PostgreSQL
MySQL
Integration with MySQL
MongoDB
Integration with MongoDB
BigQuery
Integration with BigQuery
Snowflake
Integration with Snowflake
Redshift
Integration with Redshift
Web support
Available on web
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How much does Metabase cost?
Metabase Open Source is free for self-hosted deployments with unlimited users and dashboards. Cloud-hosted Starter tier costs $90/month annually ($100/month monthly) with Pro at $517.50/month annually ($575/month monthly). Enterprise plans start at $20,000 per year.
SourceDoes Metabase charge for additional users?
Yes, Metabase charges per-user fees beyond included users. Starter includes 5 users at $6 per additional user per month. Pro includes 10 users at $12 per additional user per month. Enterprise pricing is custom.
SourceWhat usage-based fees does Metabase charge?
Metabase charges $3.75 per 1 million tokens for AI services (after 1M free tokens), $0.01 per transform run after 1,000 included per month, $0.02 for advanced transforms, and storage overages at $2 per 1M rows beyond the included 1M rows.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Metabase
- Company
- Metabase
- Based in
- San Francisco, California
Keep looking
Where to go from Metabase
- Metabase alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Metabase pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Metabase badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Spreadsheets softwareThe full category
- Best Spreadsheets softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Spreadsheets software for
Compare Metabase with
- Apache Superset
- Redash
- Tableau
- Looker
- Sigma Computing
- Equals
- Fibery
- Baserow
- NocoDB
- Budibase
- Quadratic
- Google Sheets
- SeaTable
- Teable
- APITable
- Coefficient
- Cube Software
- Sigma Computing
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Metabase, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Metabase
Metabase alternatives
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Metabase pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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Best Spreadsheets software alternatives
Free standalone cloud spreadsheet from Zoho, also bundled into the low-cost Zoho Workplace suite
Free standalone, bundled into paid Zoho Workplace for organisations
Apple spreadsheet, free on Apple hardware, now with an optional Apple Creator Studio subscription for AI features
Free with Apple hardware, optional Apple Creator Studio subscription for AI featuresCloud spreadsheet, free for a personal Google account and bundled into paid Google Workspace for organisations
Free personally, bundled into paid Google Workspace for organisationsFP&A layer that connects Excel and Google Sheets to source systems without asking finance to leave the spreadsheet
quoteSpreadsheet interface over real PostgreSQL tables, so the data stays queryable by anything that speaks SQL
Open source, no licence feeA real spreadsheet with SQL result sets landing in its cells, now sold only on annual contracts starting at 24,000 USD
Per year by connector count and refresh frequencyInfinite-canvas spreadsheet that runs Python, SQL and formulas in the same grid
Per user per month
Spreadsheet style interface that edits an existing PostgreSQL database directly, with no schema of its own
Open source, no licence fee