Metabase or Power BI? Open Source vs Microsoft Compared

When mid-sized companies set out to introduce dashboards, two names often come up: Microsoft Power BI and Metabase. Both build reports and dashboards, but they take different approaches to licensing, operations and usability. This comparison helps you understand the differences (as of November 2026).

Two vendors, two approaches

Power BI is part of Microsoft's Fabric platform and closely tied to Microsoft 365, Excel and Teams. Reports are usually built in the Windows application Power BI Desktop and shared through Microsoft's cloud service.

Metabase is developed by Metabase, Inc., a US company based in San Francisco. The software is available as an open-source edition under the AGPL licence and runs entirely in the browser. You can run Metabase on your own servers or use Metabase's cloud service.

Both vendors are therefore US companies. A key difference is that the open-source edition of Metabase can be run entirely on your own infrastructure, while Power BI relies on Microsoft's cloud service for sharing reports.

Licences and costs

Power BI

Power BI Desktop is free. Sharing reports requires licences (Microsoft list prices, as of November 2026):

• Power BI Pro: USD 14.00 per user per month, billed annually.
• Premium Per User: USD 24.00 per user per month, billed annually.
• Fabric capacity: pay-as-you-go through Azure with regional pricing. Only from size F64 can readers view reports without their own Pro licence.

Metabase

According to its pricing page, Metabase offers the following editions (as of November 2026, prices excluding tax):

• Open Source: free, unlimited users, self-hosted.
• Starter: USD 100 per month for the first five users, then USD 6 per user per month. Listed as a cloud offering.
• Pro: USD 575 per month for the first ten users, then USD 12 per user per month. Adds row- and column-level permissions, single sign-on (SSO), usage analytics and white-labelling, among other things.
• Enterprise: custom pricing from USD 20,000 per year, with extended support and the option of fully air-gapped deployment.

According to the documentation, the paid features of Pro and Enterprise can also be used self-hosted with a licence token.

What does this mean in practice?

With many readers and few creators, Metabase Open Source can be considerably cheaper because there are no per-person costs. In return, you are responsible for operations, updates and backups. With Power BI, you pay licence costs per person or for a capacity, while Microsoft runs the service.

Feature comparison

Strengths of Power BI

Power BI shines when data from many different sources needs to be combined and analysed with complex calculations. The DAX formula language supports sophisticated metrics such as year-on-year comparisons or rolling averages. If you already work with Microsoft 365, you benefit from integration with Teams, SharePoint and Excel.

Strengths of Metabase

Metabase is particularly suitable if your data already lives in an SQL database or data warehouse, such as PostgreSQL or MySQL. Business users can ask their own questions with the graphical editor without knowing SQL, while developers can write SQL directly. Because Metabase runs in the browser, it is independent of the operating system.

Embedding in your own applications

If you want to embed dashboards in a customer portal or your own application, both tools offer suitable options. Metabase Open Source supports simple embedded dashboards, which then carry a "Powered by Metabase" badge. According to the pricing page, multi-tenant embedding and white-labelling without the badge are part of the Pro edition. With Power BI, embedding for external users is possible through Power BI Embedded, which Microsoft states is included with every Fabric capacity.

Data protection and data residency

With Power BI, reports and imported data are stored in Microsoft's cloud service. Microsoft offers the EU Data Boundary for customers in Europe. Whether that is sufficient for your company is something to assess together with your data protection officer.

With self-hosted Metabase, data and metadata stay on your own servers or with a hosting provider of your choice. If you use Metabase Cloud instead, the terms of the US vendor apply. For companies with strict data residency requirements, self-hosting is often the deciding factor.

Decision guide

Power BI is the better fit if:

• your company already relies heavily on Microsoft 365,
• data from many files, cloud services and systems needs to be combined,
• complex metrics and close Excel integration are important.

Metabase is the better fit if:

• your data lives in an SQL database,
• many people need to read dashboards and you want to avoid per-user licence costs,
• you want to keep data on your own servers and can take on operations.

Checklist for your decision

1. List your data sources: is the data in databases or spread across many files and cloud services?
2. Count creators and readers and compare the licence costs of both options.
3. Clarify data residency and data protection requirements with whoever is responsible for data protection.
4. Check who would handle operations, updates and backups.
5. Build the same pilot report in both tools and let business users evaluate them.

How Simplify Data can help

Simplify Data implements both Power BI and Metabase for companies in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and remotely across Germany and helps you choose. Find out more on our Metabase page.

Sources

• Metabase: Pricing
• Metabase: License
• Microsoft: Power BI pricing
• Microsoft Learn: Microsoft Fabric licenses and capacity