Business Intelligence Software
Metabase: features, pricing and who it fits
Metabase offers a free open-source edition plus cloud plans built on a base fee that includes 5 or 10 users. SSO begins on the Pro plan. Reviewers like the easy setup and clean dashboards but find advanced data transformation limited.
Who Metabase is for
Best for
- Small teams wanting a free self-hosted start
- Startups needing cheap per-user cloud BI
- Teams embedding analytics (Pro from $575/mo)
Look elsewhere if
- Buyers needing SSO on the cheapest plan: SSO starts on Pro
- Large governed semantic-layer rollouts (not confirmed by the vendor)
Fit by company size
| Category | 1-10 people | 11-50 people | 51-500 people | 500+ people |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Intelligence Software | Strong fit | Strong fit | Workable | Workable |
Strong fitWorkablePoor fitNo data from the vendor
Metabase features
- Pricing model
- Base fee covering 5 (Starter) or 10 (Pro) users plus per extra user; no extra cost for dashboards, queries or data sources
- Target company size
- Startups and SMB; Enterprise tier from $20,000/yr
- Data connectors
- 20+ data sources on open source
- Self-service analytics
- Strong ease-of-setup and dashboard scores on G2 summaries
- Visualization and dashboards
- Unlimited questions and dashboards on all plans
- Data modeling and governance
- Row and column permissions on Pro; transforms with 1,000 runs included on Starter/Pro
- Embedded analytics
- Advanced embedding needs Pro or Enterprise; starts at $575/mo; whitelabel and multi-tenant on Pro
- AI and natural language queries
- AI on your preferred model, MCP server on open source; Metabase-hosted AI $3.75 per 1M tokens
Metabase pricing
| Plan | Price | Unit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | Free | unlimited users | Self-hosted |
| Starter | $100/mo or $1,080/yr | first 5 users; extra $6/mo or $65/yr | 3-day support |
| Pro | $575/mo or $6,210/yr | first 10 users; extra $12/mo or $130/yr | SSO, row/column permissions, auditing, whitelabel, multi-tenant embedding |
| Enterprise | From $20,000/yr | custom | Success engineer, procurement help, air-gap option, 1-day support SLA |
14-day trial on Starter and Pro. Yearly saves 10%. Anyone who logs in counts as a user. Usage add-ons: AI $3.75 per 1M tokens, storage from $2 per 1M rows.
Prices as published by Metabase on the date above. Quotes for larger teams often differ, which is what a request on SaaSBid surfaces.
Pros and cons
What users like
- Easy setup
- Good dashboards
Common complaints
- Support quality weaker in G2 summaries
- Advanced transformation limited
Integrations, security and hosting
- Integrations
- 20+
- Security and compliance
- SOC 2 Type II, SOC 1 Type II, GDPR, CCPA
- Data residency
- Cloud: US, Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific
Worth knowing before you buy
- SSO requires Pro ($575/mo): Starter has none
- Cloud hosting options in US, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific
- Billing prorated when users added or deactivated; licences non-transferable
- Enterprise includes an air-gap option and procurement help
