head to head · open source
Metabase vs charts.css
Metabase has 49,323 GitHub stars, 6,824 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped today. charts.css has 6,584 stars, 178 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 649% (49,323 vs 6,584 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; charts.css is written in HTML under MIT. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, charts.css 3%. 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 | charts.css | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-04-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 178 |
| 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 charts.css if
- You want the charts.css feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and charts.css 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 charts.css
Charts.css is an MIT licensed open source CSS framework that turns semantic HTML data tables into charts and graphs using nothing but CSS classes, aimed at frontend developers who want visualization without a JavaScript charting dependency.
read the full charts.css overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or charts.css more popular?
Metabase has 49,323 GitHub stars and charts.css has 6,584. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and charts.css free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and charts.css is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and charts.css?
Metabase is written in Clojure and charts.css in HTML. 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 charts.css?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (49,323 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose charts.css if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.