head to head · open source
Grafana vs Metabase
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars, 14,905 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Metabase has 50,114 stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grafana leads on adoption by 55% (77,638 vs 50,114 stars). Grafana is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence. Grafana has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Metabase 14%. Grafana was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (analytics, business-intelligence, dashboard, 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
| Grafana | Metabase | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 50K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 7.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Metabase if
- You want the Metabase feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You evaluated both and Metabase fits your workflow better
About Grafana
The open source platform for monitoring and observability Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data driven culture: Visualizations: Fast and flexible client side graphs with a multitude of options. Panel plugins offer many different ways to visualize metrics and logs. Dynamic Dashboards: Create dynamic & reusable dashboards with template variables that appear as dropdowns at the top of the dashboard. Explore Metrics: Explore your data through ad hoc queries and dynamic…
read the full Grafana overview →
About Metabase
Metabase Metabase is the easy, open source way for everyone in your company to ask questions and learn from data. Get started The easiest way to get started with Metabase is to sign up for a free trial of Metabase Cloud. You get expert support, backups, upgrades, an SMTP server, SSL certificate, SoC2 Type 2 security auditing, and more (plus your money goes toward improving a major open source project). Check out our quick overview of cloud vs self hosting. If you need to, you can always switch to self hosting Metabase at any time (or vice versa). Key Features Set up in five minutes (we're not kidding), or have…
read the full Metabase overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Metabase more popular?
Grafana has 77,638 GitHub stars and Metabase has 50,114. Grafana has the larger community by that measure.
Are Grafana and Metabase free?
Both are open source. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Metabase has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Grafana and Metabase?
Grafana is written in TypeScript and Metabase in Clojure. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Grafana or Metabase?
Choose Grafana if you want the larger community (77,638 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Metabase if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.