head to head · open source
Metabase vs php-spx
Metabase has 49,323 GitHub stars, 6,824 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. php-spx has 2,636 stars, 103 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 1,771% (49,323 vs 2,636 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; php-spx is written in C under GPL-3.0. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, php-spx 4%. 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.
← all 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Metabase | php-spx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Clojure | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 103 |
| 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 php-spx if
- You want the php-spx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and php-spx 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 php-spx
SPX (Simple Profiling eXtension) is a free, GPL 3.0 PHP profiling extension written in C that ships with its own built in web UI, intended for PHP developers and performance engineers who profile web requests and command line scripts on their own infrastructure.
read the full php-spx 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 php-spx more popular?
Metabase has 49,323 GitHub stars and php-spx has 2,636. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and php-spx free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and php-spx is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and php-spx?
Metabase is written in Clojure and php-spx in C. 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 php-spx?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (49,323 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose php-spx if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.