metabase overview and alternatives

Metabase is a tool that helps people understand their data. Many find it easy to start using, especially for simple tasks. You can connect it to databases like PostgreSQL, which is a big plus for many users. People like that it can show data from different sources, which is useful when using various tools.

However, some users struggle with the interface, especially when trying to do more complex analyses. Some find creating dashboards difficult and limited in customization. While basic questions are easy to ask, more complex queries can be challenging.

Performance is a concern, as Metabase can be slow, especially with large amounts of data. Visualizations are considered basic, and some users wish for more customization options. Exporting reports can also be limited.

For those comfortable with SQL, Metabase offers flexibility, but those without coding skills might find it less helpful. While it's free and easy to set up for basic use, self-hosting can be tricky.

Metabase is good for simple data reporting and visuals, but it might not be suitable for very complex analyses or large, enterprise-level needs. Some users have experienced bugs, and support can be limited, especially for the free version.

In short, Metabase is a user-friendly and cost-effective option for basic data exploration, but it has limitations in advanced analytics, performance, and customization.

Alternatives:


What users say: real end-users reviews

The thing i liked about the platform is the ability to connect to postgreSQL.

I never like the IDE which made analysis harder for me.

Metabase allows us to visualize data coming from different sources, which is crucial when we use different tools producing data.

(1) Performance: sometimes it takes too long to load and we have to be patient (2) Visualization could be better: I'm nitpicking but I feel like customization isn't really a possibility here and it could definitely improved

Visualization customizability - there is room to grow on allowing more customization and variety in the visualizations

Ease of use - metabase is very straightforward to get set up initially and for new users to create basic items Flexibility with SQL - metabase's best power is still working with it in SQL but the noCode tools are still good as well

Not enough ways to export reports or chart them

There lots of features like daily alerts, dashboards settings with various formating options and visualization tools and UI is very user friendly. Very fast and easy to inegrate with cloud architecture. Great support on diiferent queries. Very user friendly and easy to learn for new person. I use it daliy for daily data extraction or tracking.

No suggestive keywords or query completion prompts from their end. limited use of SQL functions.

Very simple to use and business users can easily get the hang of it and build and filter their own reports. While I'm at it, here's a killer Metabase feature that I haven't seen in other reporting tools I've used: While you can save a report to folders and have pretty URLs (your.domain.com/sales-report), whenever you build a report or change an existing report, it gets its own unique URL. (It's long and ugly, but I don't mind.) Here's how I use it and why it's cool: - If you're building a report and make a mistake or want to try something else, the back button actually works! - If you have an existing report (your.domain.com/sales-report) and just need to filter it quickly to (like show all sales above $10K closed by Sam this year) and send it to someone else for some quick troubleshooting, you just filter the base report and grab the unique URL and send it around! No need to save it to a folder. - I have a library of SQL queries for specific things and I can quickly pop that into Metabase (rather than using the report builder) and send the URL to someone. Again, just not having to go through the motions of saving and naming everything that may only be short-lived is nice.

Absolutely terrible for everything else, ESPECIALLY dashboard creation.

Easy to ask simple questions using their 'visual' SQL editor

Easiness comes with disadvantages,there are very few parameters you can tweak in charts and reports and not many configuration options, but it's a price you pay for usability

The downside is not everyone is a techy person. For me learning it would take a lot of time.

I've initially used Metabase on-prem, which is actually free. With this setup, I liked the most the fact that the reports were showing live data. Also, it is very easy to use, even by junior data analysts. The interface is simple and not overly complicated.

The least I liked was that the sharing could have been done through public links which I consider dangerous because you have no control over who can access that data, as long as they have the link.Also, the option to build a dashboard, I've avoided it as much as possible, as I found it too complicated and with way too few options. Basically, I felt like it was taking me too much time to build a very simple dashboard.

I believe for more complex analysis you will need a more robust system like TableauSometimes can be slow to load a lot of data but you can work on that in the infrastructure side

It is easy to use and it is cheapYou can make every analysis you need to understand how your business or product is going and get the insights to what to do next

When building queries you have to go back to the editor to keep making changes, it would be great to have the editor and the report live side by side so that when you make changes you can see them in realtime. Would make it easier to make smaller adjustments, sometimes it can be quite lengthy to make one minor change because you have to keep going back and forward.

If self-hosting, it can be a real pain to set up. The self-hosting guide, while very detailed may not be ideal for everyone. We also had some challenges when connecting our data source as the documentation was not very clear.

Our main goal of using Metabase was to equip everyone in our team with the ability to get insight into the data they need and Metabase proved to be very useful. We also loved how easy it is to create and edit dashboards, visualize data using different types of charts/graphs and manage collections of dashboards. Another great feature is how you can data from a variety of data sources including Google Analytics!

Metabase may face limitations when dealing with very large datasets or complex data structures. It might not perform optimally or provide the same level of responsiveness when handling massive amounts of data. This can impact performance and user experience in scenarios where scalability is critical.

As it is an open source product, there is minimum to low support available. There are some known bugs existing for very long time but is not been solved yet. Also, graphs/ chats are very basic.

Metabase's data visualization features are a step or two below the top competitors on the market. In addition, using more complex datasets and functions will slow down and cut into the reliability of the tool.

Metabase has allowed our org to quickly and easily centralize all of our data in one place. The flexibility of being able to use either SQL or the easy to use point and click interface has empowered users of all abilities across our org. Metabase can be a great tool to serve up basic data reporting and visuals, so long as the data and results are basic.

Slow performance with large datasets: I have noticed that Metabase can become slow and unresponsive when working with large datasets. This can be frustrating when trying to explore and analyze data quickly.

User-friendly interface: Metabase's interface is intuitive and user-friendly, making it easy to explore and analyze data without needing extensive technical skills. The drag-and-drop interface for creating charts and dashboards is particularly helpful.

Depending on the size and complexity of the data being analyzed, Metabase may experience performance issues, particularly when working with larger datasets. Sometimes, it takes too much time & gets failed.

It requires coding skills in order to generate useful data

It is difficult to link data to ask more complex queries of the data.

It is easy to quickly put together basic questions and quickly visualise data, tweaking parameters as necessary.

The views that can be created are very limited creating few opportunities for visualization

The use of SQL as being able to build the direct questions, the models you can create to use them

Metabase lacks the ability to allow people not well-versed in writing queries that ability to build reports and dashboards on their own. Having someone. who does understand how to build the queries and dashboards helps immensely

The DevOps employee had a little bit of difficulty with the initial setup, but after that it was smooth sailing.

This database analytic software is fairly easy to setup and very easy to create reports and input custom SQL queries. You can easily view the SQL that any given report is running. Tableau was too expensive and we only had a single license due to this. Metabase is far superior, faster, and cheaper.

What can I say... metabase is open source... you can install and manage it independently and at zero cost... you can create dashboards visually... and for complicated things you can always do everything from SQL. an excellent product... I have been using it for years without any problems

The only problem was with old updates...for a while now everything is going smoothly

In free version, don't have customer support at all.

Easy to write queries, lots of different visualisation methods.

Metabase is in it's infancy. I think it has the potential to be a really powerful tool that provides a user-friendly UI. For our current needs, it was far too limited; however, simple or smaller companies could benefit from it. Users of more mature BI tools (like Tableau) will have a hard time with this simple program. Can only work directly with your database tables (i.e Cannot combine to alternative sources like Excel Tables, SharePoint).

Ability to quickly generate simple visualizations and data from CLEAN & SIMPLE datasources. For a basic query tool, monthly price is inexpensive. End-users can quickly learn

I believe has efforts in building a metrics and self-service analytics layer (like Looker) but is not very well integrated with the product and seems very complicated to use. Also some of the features have bugs, but most of the time they are fixed very quickly.

I love that Metabase is open source and extremely easy to implement. It also offer somewhat advanced features considering its simplicity (like email and slack integrations). I also like the fact that it is a SQL first tool and doesn't require any specific knowledge to use. If you can use SQL you can use Metabase to amazing results and give your company great BI.

I like the simple and intuitive user interface and UX of Metabase. It removes a lot of barriers to entry to analytics for a lot of people.

To get started, Metabase is not super easy to comprehend. If you want to create custom dashboards or filter views, some SQL programming experience is definitely required. Furthermore, the larger your database, the longer dashboards or filter views take to load. Page Speed could definitely be improved.

For power users and programmers, it currently doesn't provide much integration with tools used for best practices since it tries to house everything on its own, like metadata. I wish they would integrate better with other open-source tools in the modern data stack.

Metabase helps to get an overview of your SQL data. If you are working with a database that is self-developed, a tool like metabase helps you visualize, filter and make sense of your data. Company-wide and across our Organization, we use metabase to keep track of KPIs and manage our 1p data.

The most liked thing about this software is both tech & non-tech folks can use it seamlessly, in a hassle-free manner. You can analyze with the help of Query Language or you can do the same analytically manually, much like excel. It's easily integrable with other software via a generic API. They have a self-hosted version as an offering as well, which you get for free :)

It gets too slow when all your team members start using it simultaneously. Many a time system chokes & keep loading for sometimes.

We're large (fortune 50) and have a deployed operating model and spend time with different customers. You'll have to connect to a db, so no csv's or spreadsheets or json files. We were forced to dump data into any db and create views on top of views that didn't go away. You need to know SQL to get the most of it, so we relied a lot on db folks. It was bad at combining data from sources, can't embed into other apps well, no out-of-the-box dimensions or SCDs support.. basically not enterprise ready. For a smaller team where folks wear multiple hats, maybe a good choice. Went with an oracle product in the end.

Cons If you want certain colors or pixel perfect reports this won’t work for you. It is super easy to have 5 same or slightly different versions of one query so that no one knows what is official or correct.

It is “free” so easier to get buy-in from Leadership Okay data viz functionality Can set up permissions how you’d like at the report or table level Can schedule reports to be emailed- but just the csv. Can also be sent to slack, but again, only the csv Can reference other queries and build up transformations

The open source version was lacking a few features regarding user authentication. With regards of data governance, it's scope is limited so far. We had to work around it by using CTEs with SQL, facing issues with code repetition and the problems that it brings. There's no support for code versioning (so far). With the project that we had to do, we faced a lot of trouble trying to set up the open source version of Metabase for our customers. I believe this software is great, but I would not recommend to offer it to your customers.

One of the most painful jobs of data visualization is the dashboard design (at least for me). Metabase solves this pain by providing a standard style that cannot be customizable.