head to head · open source
Metabase vs datalens
Metabase has 49,312 GitHub stars, 6,824 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. datalens has 1,702 stars, 117 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 2,797% (49,312 vs 1,702 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; datalens is written in PLpgSQL under Apache-2.0. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, datalens 7%. Metabase was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (analytics, bi, business-intelligence), 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 | datalens | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Clojure | PLpgSQL |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 117 |
| 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 datalens if
- You want the datalens feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PLpgSQL
- You evaluated both and datalens 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 datalens
DataLens is an Apache 2.0 open source business intelligence and data visualization system. It lives in the data and analytics ecosystem, specifically within business intelligence and reporting, and it covers dashboards, SQL, reporting, and visualization. The project was developed and extensively used as a primary business intelligence tool in Yandex, and it is also available as part of the Yandex Cloud platform.
read the full datalens overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or datalens more popular?
Metabase has 49,312 GitHub stars and datalens has 1,702. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and datalens free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and datalens is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and datalens?
Metabase is written in Clojure and datalens in PLpgSQL. 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 datalens?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (49,312 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose datalens if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.