Evidence vs Metabase
| Tagline | Code-based BI: build data reports and dashboards with SQL and Markdown | Easy-to-use open-source BI and embedded analytics for everyone |
| Category | BI & Dashboards | BI & Dashboards |
| Replaces | Tableau, Looker, Power BI | Tableau, Power BI, Looker |
| GitHub stars | 6.9k | 49k |
| Language | JavaScript | Clojure |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Manual One-Click | One-Click Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 4 days ago | yesterday |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Evidence
- Code-first workflow excludes non-technical, point-and-click business users
- Not designed for interactive ad-hoc exploration; reports are authored, not browsed freely
- No drag-and-drop visual builder or pivot-table exploration like Tableau/Power BI
- Limited governance, permissions, and live-querying features compared to enterprise BI
Metabase
- Advanced data modeling, row-level security, and SSO are gated behind the paid Pro/Enterprise editions
- Charting and visualization depth is more limited than Tableau or Power BI
- No deep semantic modeling layer like Looker's LookML
- Performance can degrade on very large datasets without careful tuning or caching
Bottom line
Both are a similar lift to self-host; choose Metabase for the larger community and ecosystem. Metabase has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.