head to head · open source
Metabase vs rill
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars, 6,968 forks, 4,346 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rill has 2,979 stars, 206 forks, 211 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Metabase leads on adoption by 1,582% (50,114 vs 2,979 stars). Metabase is written in Clojure under a custom or non-standard licence; rill is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Metabase has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, rill 7%. Metabase was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (bi, data, data-analysis, 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 | rill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Clojure | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 rill if
- You want the rill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and rill 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 rill
Agent first, human friendly business intelligence Docs · Data Talks Rill is the fastest BI tool for humans and agents, powered by OLAP engines like ClickHouse and DuckDB. Get Started Scaffold a project with agent context Use rill init to scaffold a project interactively: Why Rill? Build with agents — BI as code (YAML + SQL) means coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor can author projects, dashboards, and security policies end to end Semantic layer — Single source of truth for dimensions, measures, and time grains — defined in YAML, generating SQL at query time against your OLAP engine Explore with agents —…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Metabase or rill more popular?
Metabase has 50,114 GitHub stars and rill has 2,979. Metabase has the larger community by that measure.
Are Metabase and rill free?
Both are open source. Metabase has no licence declared in this registry, and rill is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Metabase and rill?
Metabase is written in Clojure and rill in Go. 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 rill?
Choose Metabase if you want the larger community (50,114 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose rill if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.