head to head · open source
Grafana vs Metabase
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars, 14,752 forks, 3,326 open issues and last shipped today. Metabase has 49,323 stars, 6,824 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped today. Grafana leads on adoption by 56% (76,792 vs 49,323 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 | ★ 77K | ★ 49K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 6.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Grafana if
- You weight community size — 77K 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
Grafana is an open source observability platform for visualizing metrics, logs, and traces across diverse data sources. It runs in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, designed for teams needing unified visibility into system behavior without vendor lock in. Built with TypeScript and Go, it provides a composable architecture that integrates with existing toolchains.
read the full Grafana overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Metabase more popular?
Grafana has 76,792 GitHub stars and Metabase has 49,323. 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 (76,792 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.