Metabase

Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and analytics platform that lets everyone in a company ask questions and learn from data — no SQL required. Questions are built with a visual query builder, written in the SQL editor for more complex analysis, or asked through Metabot, the built-in AI assistant that helps write queries and explain results.

It connects to the major data sources teams actually use: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, ClickHouse, and more. Dashboards support filters, auto-refresh, and fullscreen mode; alerts and scheduled dashboard subscriptions can be sent to email, Slack, or webhooks. The Data Studio handles turning raw data into analytics-ready tables, permissions can be as granular as row-level rules for internal teams or embedded customers, and content can be synced and versioned with Git.

Compared with Tableau or Power BI, Metabase is fully self-hostable under AGPL-3.0 and its question builder is aimed at non-analysts rather than BI specialists. Where Looker requires upfront LookML modeling, Metabase favors immediate self-serve exploration while still offering SQL, an embedding SDK for shipping analytics inside your own product, and a complete REST API. Metabase Cloud is available as a managed option if you would rather not run it yourself.