Metabase Alternatives, Metabase Competitors and Alternatives to Metabase, Priced From Vendor Pages
Eight tools teams move to from Metabase, each priced from its own vendor page, with a 10-seat cost table and a straight answer on which one fixes the problem you actually have. The one that answers questions instead of hosting dashboards is running below.
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The main Metabase alternatives are Apache Superset (free, or $20 a user a month hosted on Preset), Lightdash (free self-hosted, or $3,000 a month flat), Redash (free, open source), Hex ($36 to $75 per editor a month), Holistics ($800 a month billed yearly for 10 users), Power BI ($14 a user), Google Data Studio (free, Pro $9 per user per project) and AgentSQL ($24 to $179 a month flat). Metabase itself, read on 25 September 2026, is free to self-host and $90 or $517.50 a month billed yearly for its hosted Starter and Pro plans. Pick by the reason you are leaving: the dashboard tools replace Metabase like for like, while AgentSQL replaces the queue of ad-hoc questions that Metabase dashboards never cleared.
›_ metabase competitors, priced from the source on 25 September 2026
Eight alternatives to Metabase, and how each one bills you.
Every rate read from the vendor's own pricing page. No directory listings, no reseller figures.
Most "Metabase alternatives" lists are written by one of the alternatives, and it shows: the author's product is first and the prices are missing. This table does the opposite. It lists what each vendor publishes today, including Metabase, and it puts the line that changes the quote next to the headline price. The billing shape matters more than the sticker, because it decides whether your bill grows with headcount, with embeds, or not at all.
| Tool | Billing shape | Published price | The line that changes the quote | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metabase (the baseline) | Free self-hosted, or per plan with users included | Open Source free; Starter $100 a month ($90 billed yearly) with 5 users; Pro $575 ($517.50 yearly) with 10; Enterprise from $20,000 a year | Extra users are $6 a month on Starter and $12 on Pro. Users of your embeds count as billable users. | Teams that want a browsable dashboard layer and have someone to build the questions. |
| Apache Superset (Preset) | Free self-hosted, or per user hosted | Superset free; Preset Starter $0 for up to 5 users; Professional $20 per user per month billed annually ($25 monthly) | Embedded dashboards are a separate add-on at $500 a month for 50 viewer licenses. | Data teams who want the most capable open source dashboard tool and are comfortable writing SQL. |
| Lightdash | Free self-hosted, or flat hosted | Open source self-hosted; Cloud Pro $3,000 a month, unlimited users | Metrics are defined in dbt YAML. No per-seat pricing, which is the whole pitch. | dbt shops with 100+ people reading dashboards, where per-seat pricing is the pain. |
| Redash | Open source only | Free to self-host; the redash.io homepage lists no price | A SQL editor with charts and dashboards. You write every query yourself. | Engineers who want a shared SQL editor and nothing more. |
| Hex | Per editor | Community free; Professional $36, Team $75 per editor per month | Notebook-style SQL and Python with an AI agent. Priced on the people who build. | Analysts and data scientists who live in notebooks and publish apps to stakeholders. |
| Holistics | Per plan with 10 users included | Entry $800 a month billed yearly ($960 monthly); Standard $1,000 ($1,200) | Extra users $12.50 a month billed yearly. Modeling layer in code, like LookML. | A data team that wants governed, version-controlled metrics without Looker pricing. |
| Power BI | Per user | Pro $14, Premium Per User $24 per user per month | Power BI Desktop, the authoring tool, runs on Windows only. | Companies already on Microsoft 365 with an analyst who knows DAX. |
| Google Data Studio | Free, or per user per project | Self-service no charge; Data Studio Pro $9 per user per project per month | This is Looker Studio under its restored name. Pro is billed per project, not per company. | Marketing teams on Google Analytics, Google Ads and BigQuery. |
| AgentSQL | Flat monthly, questions not metered | Starter $24, Team $59, Scale $179 per month, billed yearly | Team covers up to 10 seats and 5 connections. Read-only, and the SQL is shown beside every answer. | Ops, finance and product people who need answers to new questions, not another dashboard. |
Two notes on the table. Tableau is left out on purpose: at a published $75 a month for a Creator seat it is a different budget conversation, covered on our Metabase vs Tableau page. And Google Data Studio is the product most lists still call Looker Studio. Google restored the old name on 11 April 2026, and its pricing page on 25 September 2026 carries the words Data Studio thirty times and Looker Studio zero times. If a comparison you are reading still says "Looker Studio Pro," it was written before April.
›_ the same team, priced ten ways
What 10 people cost per year on published list prices.
Yearly billing wherever the vendor offers it. No negotiated discounts.
One concrete company: ten people in ops, finance and product who all need numbers from the same Postgres or Snowflake database. Everything below is list price in US dollars, annual. Where a row depends on an assumption, the row states it.
| Tool | Per year | How that number is built |
|---|---|---|
| Metabase Open Source | $0 license | Free for unlimited users. You pay for the server, the Postgres application database behind it, upgrades and backups, and the AI tokens if you turn on SQL generation. |
| Google Data Studio Pro | $1,080 | 10 users at $9 a month, for ONE Google Cloud project. A second project doubles it. Self-service Data Studio is $0. |
| AgentSQL Team | $708 | $59 a month billed yearly, up to 10 seats, questions not metered. |
| Metabase Starter | $1,405 | $1,080 a year covers 5 users, plus 5 more at $65 a year each. |
| Power BI Pro | $1,680 | 10 users at $14 a month. Everyone who views shared content needs a Pro seat too. |
| Preset Professional | $2,400 | 10 users at $20 a month billed annually. |
| Metabase Pro | $6,210 | The yearly price, 10 users included. |
| Hex Team | $9,000 | If all 10 people are editors at $75 a month. Fewer editors, lower bill. |
| Holistics Entry | $9,600 | $800 a month billed yearly, 10 users included. |
| Lightdash Cloud Pro | $36,000 | $3,000 a month flat. Expensive at 10 users, cheap at 300. |
The cheap end of this table is crowded, and that is the useful finding. Metabase Starter, Data Studio Pro, Power BI Pro, Preset and AgentSQL all land between $1,080 and $2,400 a year for ten people, so for a small team the license is rarely what decides it. What decides it is the labor around the license. Every dashboard tool in the list, Metabase included, needs someone to build the question before the other nine can read it, and that someone is usually the one person on the team who knows SQL. Our full breakdown of Metabase pricing works through the per-user and embed math if you are deciding whether to stay.
The expensive end is expensive for a reason. Lightdash at $36,000 a year is priced for a company with hundreds of dashboard readers and no appetite for per-seat math; at 300 users it works out to $10 a head. Hex and Holistics are priced for data teams building governed or notebook-grade work. If you are ten people who want answers, none of those three is the shape you are looking for.
›_ choose by the problem, not the feature list
Four reasons teams replace Metabase, and what each one points to.
You are leaving because the data team still builds every question
This is the most common reason, and swapping one dashboard tool for another does not fix it. Superset, Redash, Holistics and Lightdash all assume someone models the data and builds the chart first. What changes the workload is a tool where the person with the question types it and gets the answer, which is what AgentSQL does and, since 2026, what Metabase's own AI SQL generation is reaching for. Try both on your real schema before you pay for either.
You are leaving because the Metabase bill grew with your embeds
Metabase counts the users of your embeds as billable users, at $6 or $12 a month each past the included seats. If you embed dashboards for hundreds of customers, look at Preset (embedded viewers sold in blocks of 50 for $500 a month) or Lightdash (no per-seat pricing). AgentSQL is not an embedded analytics product and will not solve this one.
You are leaving because self-hosting is eating an engineer
The open source edition is free to license and not free to run: upgrades, the application database, backups and security patches all land on someone. Metabase Cloud Starter at $90 a month billed yearly is the obvious fix and is cheaper than a day of engineering time. If you want to stop running servers entirely and mostly need answers rather than dashboards, AgentSQL needs a read-only credential and nothing else.
You are leaving because you need a real semantic layer
Then Lightdash (metrics in dbt YAML) or Holistics (a modeling language in code) are the honest answers, and both are built for a data team that wants version-controlled definitions. Metabase's models and metrics are lighter. AgentSQL reads your live schema and shows its SQL rather than enforcing a governed metric layer, so for audited, board-level metrics, pair it with one of those, do not replace them.
›_ the details that do not fit in a table
Where each Metabase competitor genuinely wins, and where it does not.
Apache Superset is the open source upgrade, if you write SQL
Superset has more chart types, more database drivers and finer permission control than Metabase, and it is backed by the Apache Software Foundation. Preset hosts it: free for up to 5 users, then $20 a user a month billed annually. The trade is usability. Metabase's click-to-explore builder is friendlier for someone who has never seen a SELECT statement; Superset leans on SQL Lab. Our Metabase vs Superset page goes feature by feature.
Lightdash is for dbt teams with many readers
Lightdash reads metrics and dimensions straight from your dbt project, so definitions live in version control next to the models. Its pricing page leads with "Stop paying per seat to look at your own data," and Cloud Pro is $3,000 a month with unlimited users. That is the right bill for a 300-person company and the wrong one for a 15-person startup, which is better served by the free self-hosted edition or by Metabase Cloud.
Redash is a shared SQL editor, and only that
Redash does one job well: engineers write queries, save them, chart them and put them on a dashboard. There is no click-to-explore builder for business users, and the redash.io homepage lists no price because there is no hosted plan to buy; you run it yourself. If your Metabase users were all writing native SQL anyway, Redash is a lighter home for them. If they were using the query builder, it is a step backward.
Hex and Holistics are for data teams, not their stakeholders
Hex is a collaborative notebook for SQL and Python with an AI agent, priced per editor at $36 or $75 a month; it shines when analysts publish interactive apps for others. Holistics adds a code-defined modeling layer, starting at $800 a month billed yearly for 10 users. Both are genuinely better than Metabase for the analyst. Neither reduces the number of questions that route through the analyst.
Power BI and Data Studio win on price and ecosystem
If your company runs on Microsoft 365, Power BI Pro at $14 a user is hard to beat, with the caveats that Desktop is Windows only and every viewer needs a license (our Power BI pricing page has the full ladder). If you live in Google Analytics, Ads and BigQuery, Data Studio is free and its Pro tier is $9 per user per project. Both still need someone to build the report.
Metabase itself now has AI, and that is worth testing first
On 25 September 2026 metabase.com lists "Ask questions with AI" and "SQL generation" on every plan, including the free open source column, powered by your own AI provider key or Metabase's service at $3.75 per million tokens. If the reason you are shopping is that business users cannot get answers, turn that on before you migrate anything. If it answers your questions well on your schema, staying is the cheapest move on this page.
›_ the alternative for answers, not dashboards
AgentSQL, ask the database, get the number and the SQL.
AgentSQL is not another dashboard tool. It connects read-only to the PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery database you already run, reads the live schema, turns a plain-English question into SQL written for that engine's dialect, runs it, and returns the number, a chart and the exact query. There is no server to host, no question to build first and no application database to back up. Team is $59 a month billed yearly for up to 10 seats and 5 connections, and questions are not metered on any plan. It works by text to SQL, and the SQL stays visible so an analyst can check any answer before it goes in a deck.
The fair comparison with Metabase's own AI is about where the answer lives. Metabase generates SQL inside its question and dashboard model, which is great when the output should become a saved dashboard. AgentSQL is built for the question nobody will ask twice: last quarter's refunds by region, which accounts churned after a price change, how many orders shipped late in one warehouse. Many teams run both, with Metabase for the weekly dashboards and AgentSQL for everything in between. Read-only is enforced by the database account, not promised by a prompt, and the setup is on our read-only security page.
Where AgentSQL is the wrong tool, plainly. If you need dashboards embedded in your product for customers, look at Preset or Lightdash. If your data is in SQL Server, Oracle, ClickHouse or MongoDB, we do not connect to it and Metabase does. If you need a governed metric layer for board reporting, Lightdash or Holistics. For an internal team on one of our four engines that is tired of waiting for someone to build the chart, the console at the top of this page is the product, running now. The pricing page has every plan.
›_ frequently asked
Metabase alternatives questions, answered.
What is the best alternative to Metabase?
It depends on why you are leaving. For another open source dashboard tool, Apache Superset is the most capable. For dbt teams, Lightdash. For Microsoft shops, Power BI at $14 a user. If the real problem is that ad-hoc questions still queue behind the data team, AgentSQL answers plain-English questions against your database directly, from $24 a month.
Who are Metabase's competitors?
The tools buyers compare it with most are Apache Superset and its hosted version Preset, Redash, Lightdash, Hex, Holistics, Power BI, Tableau and Google Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio). AI-first tools such as AgentSQL compete on a different axis: they skip the dashboard build and answer the question itself, with the SQL shown.
Is there a free alternative to Metabase?
Yes. Apache Superset, Redash and Lightdash all have free open source editions you host yourself, and Google Data Studio's self-service tier is free. Free means no license fee, not no cost: self-hosting puts upgrades, backups and uptime on your team, which is usually the reason people leave self-hosted Metabase in the first place.
Is Metabase still free?
The open source edition is still free with unlimited users, and on 25 September 2026 metabase.com lists AI SQL generation on that free column too, using your own AI provider key. Hosted plans start at Starter, $100 a month or $90 billed yearly for 5 users, and Pro at $575 a month or $517.50 billed yearly for 10.
How much does Metabase cost per user?
Past the included seats, $6 a user a month on Starter ($65 a year) and $12 on Pro ($130 a year), read from metabase.com on 25 September 2026. The important detail is that Metabase counts people using your embedded dashboards as users, so a customer-facing embed can multiply the bill.
Is Superset better than Metabase?
Superset is more powerful for data teams: more chart types, more connectors and more control, at the cost of a steeper learning curve. Metabase is easier for business users to click around in. If your users will not write SQL either way, the choice between them matters less than whether someone has to build every chart first.
Does Metabase have AI?
Yes. Metabase lists "Ask questions with AI" and "SQL generation" on every plan on its pricing page. Most teams bring their own AI provider API key; Metabase's own AI service is $3.75 per million tokens with one million included. It generates SQL inside Metabase's question and dashboard model.
What is the best Metabase alternative for non-technical users?
A tool where the non-technical user types the question and gets the number, rather than one where an analyst builds a dashboard for them. AgentSQL is built for exactly that on PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake and BigQuery, read-only, with the SQL shown so an analyst can check it. Power BI and Data Studio are friendlier than Superset but still need someone to build the report.
›_ metabase, compared
›_ how it works
›_ connect your database
Skip the dashboard. Ask the question.
Read-only on Postgres, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery. The answer comes back with the SQL beside it.