head to head · open source
Metabase vs deck.gl
Metabase has 49,312 GitHub stars, 6,824 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deck.gl has 14,597 stars, 2,267 forks, 532 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Metabase leads on adoption by 238% (49,312 vs 14,597 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; deck.gl is written in TypeScript under MIT. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, deck.gl 16%. 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 | deck.gl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 15K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 deck.gl if
- You want the deck.gl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and deck.gl 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 deck.gl
deck.gl is an MIT licensed, WebGL2 and WebGPU powered visualization framework that renders large scale geospatial and data driven layers in the browser, built for JavaScript, TypeScript and Python developers who need high performance maps and custom visualizations without writing their own GPU rendering code.
read the full deck.gl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or deck.gl more popular?
Metabase has 49,312 GitHub stars and deck.gl has 14,597. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and deck.gl free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and deck.gl is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and deck.gl?
Metabase is written in Clojure and deck.gl in TypeScript. 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 deck.gl?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (49,312 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose deck.gl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.