head to head · open source
Metabase vs just-dashboard
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. just-dashboard has 1,587 stars, 58 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 3,058% (50,114 vs 1,587 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; just-dashboard is written in TypeScript under MIT. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, just-dashboard 4%. Metabase was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (business-intelligence, dashboard, data, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Metabase | just-dashboard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-02-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 58 |
| 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 just-dashboard if
- You want the just-dashboard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and just-dashboard 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 just-dashboard
just dashboard Documentation • Getting started • Chart types just dashboard turns this: Into this: To host your dashboard, you can roll your own backend, or: Create a public GitHub gist with a file named dashboard.yml or dashboard.json (depending on your preferred format) Access it as a shareable dashboard at: username}/{Gist ID} In fact, I've created a Gist with the example above: thus it's accessible as a dashboard at:
read the full just-dashboard overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Business Intelligence & Reporting projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Business Intelligence & Reporting field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or just-dashboard more popular?
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars and just-dashboard has 1,587. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and just-dashboard free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and just-dashboard is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and just-dashboard?
Metabase is written in Clojure and just-dashboard 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 just-dashboard?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (50,114 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose just-dashboard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.