head to head · open source
Metabase vs charts.css
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. charts.css has 6,584 stars, 179 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 661% (50,114 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 | ★ 50K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 179 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Metabase if
- You weight community size — 50K 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 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 →
About charts.css
Charts.css Charts.css is an open source CSS framework for data visualization. Visualization help end users understand data. Charts.css help frontend developers turn data into beautiful charts and graphs using simple CSS classes . No dependencies. 58.4kb minified size. 5.9kb gzipped file size! Documentation Check the full documentation on ChartsCSS.org. Get Started Components Charts Customization Development Examples Installation CDN Use jsdelivr CDN: Or unpkg CDN: Package Manager Install using npm: Or using yarn: Usage The data is structured using semantic HTML tags and styled using CSS classes which change the…
read the full charts.css overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or charts.css more popular?
Metabase has 50,114 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 (50,114 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose charts.css if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.