head to head · open source
Metabase vs G6
Metabase has 49,338 GitHub stars, 6,832 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped today. G6 has 12,300 stars, 1,646 forks, 333 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 301% (49,338 vs 12,300 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; G6 is written in TypeScript under MIT. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, G6 13%. Metabase was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-visualization), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Metabase | G6 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-07-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Metabase if
- You weight community size — 49K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick G6 if
- You want the G6 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and G6 fits your workflow better
About Metabase
Metabase is an open source business intelligence and embedded analytics tool, written in Clojure, that lets everyone in a company ask questions of their data and build dashboards without needing to know SQL.
read the full Metabase overview →
About G6
G6 is a TypeScript graph visualization engine, published as @antv/g6 under the MIT licence, that provides the drawing, layout, analysis, interaction, animation, theme and plugin primitives developers need to build their own graph visualization and analysis applications.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or G6 more popular?
Metabase has 49,338 GitHub stars and G6 has 12,300. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and G6 free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and G6 is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and G6?
Metabase is written in Clojure and G6 in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Metabase or G6?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (49,338 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose G6 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.