head to head · open source
Metabase vs lets-plot
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lets-plot has 1,784 stars, 62 forks, 145 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 2,709% (50,114 vs 1,784 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; lets-plot is written in Kotlin under MIT. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, lets-plot 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 | lets-plot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 62 |
| 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 lets-plot if
- You want the lets-plot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and lets-plot 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 lets-plot
Lets Plot Lets Plot is a multiplatform plotting library built on the principles of the Grammar of Graphics. The library design is heavily influenced by Leland Wilkinson's work The Grammar of Graphics describing the deep features that underlie all statistical graphics. This grammar [...] is made up of a set of independent components that can be composed in many different ways. This makes [it] very powerful because you are not limited to a set of pre specified graphics, but you can create new graphics that are precisely tailored for your problem. Hadley Wickham, "ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis"…
read the full lets-plot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or lets-plot more popular?
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars and lets-plot has 1,784. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and lets-plot free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and lets-plot is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and lets-plot?
Metabase is written in Clojure and lets-plot in Kotlin. 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 lets-plot?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (50,114 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose lets-plot if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.