head to head · open source
Metabase vs plot
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. plot has 5,418 stars, 251 forks, 349 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Metabase leads on adoption by 825% (50,114 vs 5,418 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; plot is written in HTML under ISC. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, plot 5%. 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 | plot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | Custom / other | ISC |
| Written in | Clojure | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 251 |
| 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 plot if
- You want the plot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the ISC license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and 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 plot
Observable Plot Observable Plot is a free, open source, JavaScript library for visualizing tabular data, focused on accelerating exploratory data analysis. It has a concise, memorable, yet expressive API, featuring scales and layered marks in the grammar of graphics style. Daily downloads of Observable Plot · oss analytics Documentation 📚 Examples 🖼️ Releases 🚀 See our CHANGELOG and summary release notes. Getting help 🏠 See our community guide. Contributing 🙏 See CONTRIBUTING.md.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or plot more popular?
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars and plot has 5,418. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and plot free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and plot is licensed under ISC. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and plot?
Metabase is written in Clojure and plot in HTML. 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 plot?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (50,114 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose plot if its feature set, stack or ISC licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.