Metabase review: open-source BI and analytics platform with dashboards, SQL and no-code querying. See features, self-hosted vs cloud pricing and alternatives.
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and analytics platform designed to let both technical and non-technical users ask questions of their data and build dashboards without necessarily writing SQL. It began in 2014 as a side project by Sameer Al-Sakran and co-founders at the Expa startup studio in San Francisco, growing through developer word-of-mouth on GitHub before becoming a funded company.
The company has raised funding from NEA and Insight Partners across seed, Series A and Series B rounds, grown to over 100 employees, and now offers Metabase both as free self-hosted open-source software and as a fully managed Metabase Cloud service.
Metabase connects to popular relational databases and data warehouses such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake, BigQuery and Redshift, and provides both a no-code visual query builder for business users and a native SQL editor for analysts, letting one tool serve mixed-skill teams.
The platform includes interactive dashboards, scheduled alerts delivered by email or Slack, embedded analytics for building customer-facing reporting into other products, and an automated 'X-ray' exploration feature that surfaces summary insights about a dataset without manual query-writing.
Metabase's Open Source edition is completely free to self-host, with unlimited users and community support, making it a popular starting point for startups and small data teams.
For teams wanting managed hosting or enterprise features like SSO and audit logs, Metabase Cloud Starter is priced at roughly $500 per month for 10 users, Cloud Pro at roughly $575 per month, and Enterprise pricing starts around $20,000 per year for the largest deployments.
Yes, Metabase's Open Source edition is free to self-host with unlimited users; paid Cloud and Enterprise tiers add managed hosting, SSO and advanced governance features.
Metabase was started in 2014 by Sameer Al-Sakran along with co-founders including Allen Gilliland, originally as a side project at the Expa startup studio in San Francisco.
No, Metabase includes a no-code visual query builder for non-technical users, alongside a native SQL editor for analysts who prefer to write queries directly.
Metabase connects to major relational databases and data warehouses including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake, BigQuery and Redshift, among others.
Metabase Cloud Starter is priced at roughly $500 per month including 10 users, with Pro plans at roughly $575 per month and custom Enterprise pricing above that.
Yes, Metabase supports embedded analytics, letting companies embed dashboards and charts directly into their own customer-facing applications.