Metabase vs Redash

Metabase

Business intelligence anyone can use

Redash

Connect to any data source, visualize, and share

Feature Metabase Redash
Category Low-Code Analytics
Sub-category BI / Dashboard BI / Dashboard
Maturity stable mature
Complexity beginner intermediate
Performance tier medium medium
License AGPL-3.0 BSD-2-Clause
License type copyleft permissive
Pricing fully free fully free
GitHub stars 40.0K 27.0K
Contributors 0 0
Commit frequency weekly weekly
Plugin ecosystem none none
Docs quality good good
Backing org Metabase Redash (archived)
Funding model open_core community
Min RAM 1 GB 1 GB
Min CPU cores 1 1
Scaling pattern single_node single_node
Self-hostable Yes Yes
K8s native No No
Offline capable No No
Vendor lock-in none none
Languages Clojure, TypeScript Python
API type REST REST
Protocols HTTP HTTP
Deployment docker docker
SDK languages
Team size fit solo, small, medium small, medium
First release 2020 2020
Latest version

When to use Metabase

  • Primary: self-serve-analytics
  • Primary: dashboard-building
  • Primary: data-exploration

When to use Redash

  • Ad-hoc SQL queries across multiple data sources
  • Automated report dashboards with alerts
  • Team data sharing and collaboration

Metabase anti-patterns

  • Clojure codebase limits contributors
  • Complex queries need SQL knowledge
  • Embedding requires paid plan

Redash anti-patterns

  • Development has slowed (Databricks acquired)
  • No no-code query builder
  • Self-hosted only — no official cloud
Full Metabase profile → Full Redash profile → All comparisons