Metabase vs Evidence
Both are alternatives to Tableau. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Evidence vs Metabase — same comparison, one verdict.
Metabase
TOP PICKThe one non-technical colleagues actually use without training.
Metabase's defining quality is that people who do not write SQL get answers from it unaided — a question builder that reads like English, sensible defaults, and dashboards that assemble in minutes. AGPL-3.0 open-source edition, self-hostable in a single JAR, with paid cloud and enterprise tiers above it. Around 48k stars. For the very common case where a company needs a hundred people to read dashboards and five to build them, this removes the per-viewer bill entirely and is often better received than the tool it replaces.
Evidence
Dashboards as Markdown and SQL, versioned in Git.
Evidence takes a genuinely different position: a report is a Markdown file with SQL in it, built into a static site. That means dashboards live in your repository, get reviewed in pull requests, deploy through CI and cannot be silently edited by someone in a UI. MIT licensed. It is the wrong tool for exploratory analysis and the right one for recurring, trusted reporting that has to be identical every month. Included because the BI category assumes a GUI is a requirement and for a good number of engineering teams it is the opposite.
Side by side
| Metabase | Evidence | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 88 | 94 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | AGPL-3.0 (open-source edition; paid cloud and enterprise tiers) | MIT |
| Pricing | Open-source edition free and self-hostable. Cloud and enterprise tiers are paid. | Free and open source. Evidence Cloud is an optional paid hosted tier. |
Metabase is Macrostack's recommended Tableau alternative, so it's our pick here.
Metabase
Strengths
- +Non-technical staff genuinely use it without training
- +No per-viewer cost when self-hosted — the main saving
- +Single JAR deployment; very simple to run
- +Question builder plus full SQL when you need it
Trade-offs
- −Weaker than Tableau for complex statistical and geospatial work
- −Some governance features sit in the paid enterprise tier
- −Performance depends heavily on the underlying warehouse
- −AGPL-3.0 needs reading if you embed it in a product
Evidence
Strengths
- +Reports live in Git — reviewed, versioned, deployable through CI
- +MIT with no enterprise carve-out
- +Output is a static site: fast, cheap, nothing to keep running
- +Impossible to quietly alter a number without a commit
Trade-offs
- −No point-and-click building — you write SQL and Markdown
- −Not an exploration tool; it produces fixed reports
- −Non-technical staff cannot author
- −Small community
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-04. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.