# Metabase

> Metabase connects to existing databases, lets people ask questions by clicking, in SQL or in natural language, and gathers the answers into dashboards and scheduled reports. The same analyses can be embedded in your own product with row and column permissions, so customers see their figures there.

- Vendor: Metabase, Inc., Spring Valley, California
- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/metabase
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/werkzeugkasten/metabase
- Area: Operations & finance · Cluster: reporting and analysis
- Role: Off-the-shelf product · Origin: Established, AI retrofitted
- As of: 2026-09-28 · Reviewed: 2026-09-28 · Author: Dr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
- Toolbox: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox.md

## Verdict

Prevents falling behind: Figures that everyone in the company reads the same way are part of the basic kit of a growing software business. Power BI, Looker and Hex answer the same question, and any competitor can install Metabase on the same day. The effort lies in the groundwork: clean tables, agreed metrics, a permission model that fits the organisation. Anyone embedding analyses in their own product moves the tool closer to the core product, because customers are then looking at the charts. That only works from the Pro package upwards and changes nothing about the verdict for internal use.

## Suitability by company size

- Solo: suitable with caveats — The open-source edition costs nothing and has no user limit. It needs your own server, a Postgres database for the application and the willingness to install security updates within days. In 2026 the vendor had published eighteen security advisories by 25 September, seven of them critical. The managed Starter version starts at 100 US dollars a month (as of 25 September 2026) for up to five people, so 1,200 US dollars a year.
- Mid-market: suitable — This is where the use case sits. Starter costs 100 US dollars a month with five people and 6 US dollars for each additional one, so thirty people come to 250 US dollars a month. The calculation tips at one point: SAML sign-in, SCIM provisioning, row and column permissions and the usage log arrive only with Pro. There the same thirty people cost 815 US dollars a month. Anyone starting on Starter who later has to answer a security questionnaire pays roughly three times as much from that day on.
- Enterprise: suitable with caveats — Procurement checks three points. Support runs on weekdays from 8 am to 5 pm Pacific time, which means from late afternoon German time, and a response within one business day at every severity is committed in the plan comparison only for Enterprise, which starts at 20,000 US dollars a year; Starter and Pro are listed there with three business days. The cloud contract is governed by Californian law and caps liability at the payments of the last twelve months. The August 2026 incident belongs in every risk review. According to the vendor, fewer than three per cent of cloud customers were compromised. Anyone running the tool in their own data centre keeps location and logs in their own hands and carries the installation of every update in return.

## Vendor staying power

Established: Eleven years in market: the public code repository has existed since February 2015 and the first version appeared in December 2015. The last publicly reported funding is a Series B of 30 million US dollars on 19 August 2021. Development continues visibly, with a release dated 16 September 2026 and a pre-release dated 24 September 2026. The contracts for cloud and self-hosting date from autumn 2025, and the cloud privacy policy carries the date 1 June 2020. From 2026 come the exploited zero-day of August and the rise in security advisories from three in 2025 to eighteen by 25 September 2026. The user figures are the company's own.

- Legal entity and registered office: Metabase, Inc., 9740 Campo Rd. Suite 1029, Spring Valley, CA 91977, United States; the legal texts name no entity in a German-speaking country (source: https://www.metabase.com/hosting/privacy_policy, as of 2026-09-25)
- Time in market: Public code repository since 2 February 2015, with 49,411 stars on 25 September 2026; source code under the AGPL, the part for paid features under the vendor's commercial licence (source: https://github.com/metabase/metabase, as of 2026-09-25)
- Last reported equity round: 30 million US dollars Series B led by Insight Partners, with Expa and NEA, announced on 19 August 2021, total capital raised 42.5 million US dollars; the figure of more than 30,000 organisations using it is the company's own (source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/metabase-raises-30m-in-series-b-financing-to-expand-worldwide-access-to-its-best-in-class-open-source-business-intelligence-platform-301358789.html, as of 2021-08-19)
- Ongoing development: Release v0.63.18 of 16 September 2026, pre-release v0.64.0-beta of 24 September 2026 (source: https://github.com/metabase/metabase/releases, as of 2026-09-25)
- Documented incident and how it was handled: On 3 August 2026 a cloud customer reported an API key created outside working hours. The cause was SQL injection via the password reset endpoint without authentication, introduced by a refactor on 11 November 2025 and affecting all versions from 0.58 (CVE-2026-72898). According to the vendor, fewer than three per cent of cloud customers were compromised, along with some open-source and self-hosted installations reachable from the internet. Fixed versions appeared on 6 August 2026 and a post-mortem on 27 August 2026; an external forensics firm was engaged. (source: https://www.metabase.com/blog/vulnerability-what-happened, as of 2026-08-27)
- Number of security advisories: Eighteen published security advisories from 1 January to 25 September 2026, seven of them critical; the whole of 2025 had three (source: https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories, as of 2026-09-25)

## Cost of leaving

Moderate: The data itself stays with the customer, because Metabase queries inside the connected databases and does not retain results unless caching is switched on. That eases a switch. Between cloud and self-hosting the entire application database moves across; the vendor provides the snapshot on request. Questions, dashboards, models and metrics can be exported as YAML from Pro upwards. What the export leaves missing is the path into another tool: questions from the click builder exist in the in-house query language and have to be rebuilt in Power BI or Looker, and anyone who has embedded analyses in their own product via the developer kit replaces code at every embedding point.

## Regulation and data

| Point | Finding | Evidence | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data processing agreement | public and part of the contract on sign-up, but covers only part of the data — The data processing agreement sits as Exhibit B in the cloud terms of service of 17 September 2025, readable without login and agreed on every plan at the moment of sign-up. The limitation lies in the definitions. Covered is personal data within the customer databases that Metabase queries, plus the inputs to the AI assistant. Not covered are the application data, which the contract expressly defines to include users' login credentials and the queries they submit, and the metadata describing the data sets. Those are addressed by the cloud privacy policy, in which Metabase acts as a controller in its own right. Anyone writing queries with names or email addresses in the filter is therefore working outside the data processing agreement. For self-hosting the agreement falls away according to the vendor, because it has no access to data there. | partially evidenced | 2025-09-17 |
| Storage location | EU in Frankfurt selectable on every cloud plan, AI service and add-on storage with US processors — The plan comparison lists the choice of continent for Starter, Pro and Enterprise at no extra charge, and the region can be switched self-service in the customer account, usually with less than thirty minutes of downtime. No page says which region is preset at sign-up. The documents contradict each other on the number of regions: the guide to switching names two, Oregon and Frankfurt, the list of addresses to allow names five, and the security page speaks of four continents. Frankfurt appears in all three. Two components run, regardless of the region chosen, with processors whose location the sub-processor list gives as the United States: the vendor's AI service via Anthropic and OpenAI, and the add-on storage for uploaded spreadsheets via ClickHouse. The AI service is avoided by storing your own key with a model provider. When self-hosting, the operator determines the location entirely. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-25 |
| Subprocessors | two public lists that contradict each other — The data processing agreement refers to the list on the website. It names thirty recipients with purpose and country, every one of them located in the United States, Amazon Web Services included, even though the cloud can run in Frankfurt. It mixes the processors of the product with those of the website, sales and marketing, such as HotJar, VWO, Apollo.io and Mailchimp, without separating them. The vendor's trust portal carries a second list. It additionally names Klenty, which is absent from the website, and gives HotJar's location as EU. Amazon Web Services and Anthropic do not appear in it. Under clause 2.4 new sub-processors are announced by updating the website; an objection is possible within ten days and leads to a good-faith resolution, and the contract names no termination right for it. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-28 |
| Third-country transfer | standard contractual clauses Modules 2 and 3 in the contract, without assignment of onward transfers — Clause 5 of the data processing agreement permits transfers from the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom to the United States and incorporates the 2021 standard contractual clauses, Module 2 for customers as controllers and Module 3 for customers as processors, with Irish law for transfers from the Economic Area. Signing the main agreement counts as signing the clauses. Clause 2.2 allows sub-processors to engage further vendors of their own. The documents do not assign on which basis the roughly thirty US recipients on the list operate, and none of them mentions the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The privacy policy covering the vendor's own responsibility merely states that data may be processed anywhere in the world. | partially evidenced | 2025-09-17 |
| Training on customer data | the cloud agreement grants a licence to queries and metadata for product development; the contract names no route to object — For the cloud, the security page says the vendor does not want to see the data and keeps no query results unless caching is switched on. It adds that processors must certify using customer data only to provide the services. Under clause 6.2 the cloud agreement grants Metabase a licence to use the application data, including the queries submitted, and the metadata to develop and improve its own products. The content of the customer databases is excluded. The contract names no route to object. The documentation on the AI assistant adds that Metabase collects part of the metadata to improve the AI integration and may receive the conversation, which can contain sensitive data, when a response is rated. For the model providers, Exhibit D limits sharing to operating the service; an express exclusion of training is not in it. The self-hosting licence of 3 November 2025 has no such clause: there, data and analyses belong to the customer alone, and the AI assistant runs on the customer's own key. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-28 |
| Retention and deletion | thirty days to download, then deletion, backups under an unquantified schedule — After the contract ends, users may download their data for thirty days under clause 5.5. Clause 7 of the data processing agreement commits to deleting all customer personal data at the end of the contract and excludes backup and archive copies, which are deleted under a retention schedule of its own. That schedule is not published. For uploaded spreadsheets in the add-on storage, Exhibit C permits retention of up to 180 days after the end of the contract. Inputs to the AI assistant and its responses are expressly excluded from the download period. The security page adds that instance data is removed automatically after a period of inactivity, without stating that period. | partially evidenced | 2025-09-17 |
| Certifications | SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 1 Type 2, reports via the trust portal — The security page names a SOC 2 Type 2 report with no exceptions, issued by the audit firm Sensiba LLP, and a SOC 1 Type 2 report on controls over financial reporting. On 25 September 2026 the trust portal lists both reports, a SOC 2 Type 1 report in addition, bridge letters for 2025 to 2026, a certificate of insurance, a penetration test report from 2026 and several policies. The audit period and scope appear on no public page; the reports themselves sit in the portal. The vendor does not name ISO 27001 or ISO/IEC 42001. The plan comparison assigns SOC 2 to all cloud plans; for self-hosting the attestation naturally does not apply. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-28 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | no statement on the regulation, although the AI assistant can also face end customers — The AI assistant Metabot answers questions in natural language, writes SQL and interprets charts, and from Pro upwards it can be embedded in your own product so that the operator's customers talk to it. On 25 September 2026 neither the contracts nor the AI documentation say anything about Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 or the transparency duties under Article 50 of the regulation. The operator can set the labelling themselves: from Pro, the assistant's name and icon can be changed and custom system prompts stored. Which side carries the labelling duty depends on the operator's role. Anyone shipping the embedded assistant to customers should check the labelling before the first customer conversation. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-28 |
| Audit logging | usage log from Pro upwards, 720 days by default — What is recorded: views of dashboards and questions, executed queries, downloads, changed settings and invitations, each with person and timestamp. From Pro there is also a dedicated review of conversations with the AI assistant; access via the MCP interface expressly does not appear there. The log exists only in Pro and Enterprise; the open-source edition and Starter do not record views and activity at all, and after an upgrade recording starts only on the day of the upgrade. Retention is 720 days and can be changed through an environment variable. Export runs through the tool's normal routes, meaning export of individual analyses or, when self-hosting, directly from the application database. The vendor describes no continuous feed into a security analysis system. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-25 |

## Cost

- Entry: The open-source edition costs nothing and has no user limit; operations then sit with the customer, and the vendor estimates a comparable setup with servers, load balancing, a managed database and a mail server at a minimum of 112 to 132 US dollars a month. In the cloud, Starter begins at 100 US dollars a month with five people and 6 US dollars for each additional one, Pro at 575 US dollars a month with ten people and 12 US dollars for each additional one. Annual billing saves ten per cent. As of 25 September 2026. (as of 2026-09-25)
- Where it gets expensive: The jump from Starter to Pro. SAML sign-in, SCIM provisioning, row and column permissions, the usage log and embedding without the vendor logo all sit in Pro, and for thirty people the bill therefore grows from 250 to 815 US dollars a month. The second point is response time: one business day at every severity appears in the plan comparison only with Enterprise from 20,000 US dollars a year. On top come usage items that only show up in operation: 3.75 US dollars per million tokens for the vendor's AI service after one free million, one to two cents per run for data transforms after 1,000 free runs, and add-on storage from 2 US dollars per million rows. The AI item is avoided by storing your own key.

## Three routes compared

### Power BI, the vendor inside the Microsoft contract

Power BI, Tableau and Looker answer the same question. Where a frame agreement with Microsoft, Salesforce or Google already exists, sign-in, permissions and logs can run on the existing directory service, and procurement does not have to vet a new supplier. A contractual argument comes on top: in an incident, the customer has a counterparty with its own legal department and a presence in Europe. Without such an agreement this advantage falls away, and for a software business on Postgres what counts most is which tool opens up the existing tables with the least effort.

### Hex, the notebook with a built-in analyst

Hex combines SQL, Python and an AI agent in one shared notebook and is aimed at people who analyse data. On 25 September 2026 prices count per editing person: 36 US dollars a month for Professional, 75 US dollars for Team, and a free tier with a trial of the agent. Readers cost less there than with Metabase, where every signed-in person counts. At Hex an EU environment exists only from Team and only by contract, sign-in through your own directory service only in Enterprise, and there is no self-hosting option. Metabase itself now offers its AI assistant on every plan, including the open-source edition with your own key.

### Dashboards on Supabase, built with Claude Code

For fixed reports, building it yourself is short work. Supabase from this catalogue holds the data in Postgres, a small web interface on Cloudflare Pages shows a dozen metrics, and n8n sends out the weekly report every Monday. With Claude Code that takes five to eight person-days (estimate), which at a 1,200 euro day rate means 6,000 to 9,600 euros once, plus a low two-figure amount a month to run it (estimate). Against that stand 250 US dollars a month for thirty people on Starter, or nothing for the open-source edition. The self-build reaches its limits once more people work with the figures. The first question nobody foresaw lands back with the developer, because there is no builder for non-technical people. Row permissions for customers or departments demand tenant separation that needs proper testing. And the definition of every metric sits in code that someone first has to read after a change of staff. For a dozen fixed metrics, building it yourself is enough. If colleagues are meant to ask their own questions, the open-source edition is the stronger case.

Recommendation by size:

- Solo: Run the open-source edition if updates get installed reliably.
- Mid-market: Buy or self-host, and budget for Pro before the first security questionnaire.
- Enterprise: Self-host under an Enterprise licence, renegotiate the cloud contract first.

## Context

- Implements method: [Churn Cohorting by Tenure](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/churn-cohorting) — Separating churn by customer cohort is a query over your own database, and this kind of recurring analysis is what such a tool is built for.
- Implements method: [Data Monetization: Improve, Wrap, Sell](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/data-monetization-improve-wrap-sell) — Embedded analytics are the shortest route from the first to the second step of this method, because the same figures that improve your own operations land with the customer as an add-on.
- Implements method: [Net Retention Audit (Cohort NRR)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/netto-retention-audit) — The cohort calculation behind a retention figure needs access to raw data across the same set of customers, and a reporting tool on your own database makes it verifiable.
- Implements method: [Regulatory Density Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/regulatory-density-test) — The density of evidence duties decides whether the permission model, the log and self-hosting are add-ons or conditions of purchase, and that is what the jump from Starter to Pro hangs on here.
- Alternative: [PostHog](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/posthog)
- Alternative: Supabase
- Displaces: The spreadsheet into which someone copies figures from three systems by hand every month, The request to engineering to quickly write a query for management, The home-built customer area in which customers see their usage figures as a static list

## Evidence

- Cloud terms of service dated 17 September 2025: Exhibits A to D, licence to application data and metadata for product development in clause 6.2, thirty days to download after termination, Californian law, liability cap, data processing agreement with definitions, sub-processors, standard contractual clauses and deletion, retention of up to 180 days in the add-on storage, and terms for the AI assistant — https://www.metabase.com/license/hosting (as of 2025-09-17)
- Self-hosting licence dated 3 November 2025: data and analyses belong to the customer alone, the AI assistant runs on the customer's own key — https://www.metabase.com/license/commercial (as of 2025-11-03)
- Cloud privacy policy dated 1 June 2020: legal entity and address, Metabase as controller for account and application data, exclusion of the customer databases, processing anywhere in the world, retention as long as necessary — https://www.metabase.com/hosting/privacy_policy (as of 2020-06-01)
- Website sub-processor list with thirty recipients, each with purpose and location United States — https://www.metabase.com/hosting/subprocessors (as of 2026-09-25)
- Trust portal with SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 1 Type 2, bridge letters 2025 to 2026, a certificate of insurance, a 2026 penetration test, several policies and a second sub-processor list without Amazon Web Services and Anthropic — https://trust.metabase.com (as of 2026-09-25)
- Security page: commitment never to look at or copy data when self-hosting, no retention of query results in the cloud unless caching is on, hosting options on four continents, audit firm Sensiba LLP, annual penetration tests, removal of instance data after unquantified inactivity — https://www.metabase.com/security (as of 2026-09-28)
- Region change in the customer account between Oregon and Frankfurt, usually with less than thirty minutes of downtime — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/cloud/change-region (as of 2026-09-25)
- Addresses per region in North Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney and São Paulo — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/cloud/ip-addresses-to-whitelist (as of 2026-09-25)
- What the AI assistant sends to the vendor and to model providers, collection of metadata to improve the AI integration, and transmission of the conversation when rating a response — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/ai/privacy (as of 2026-09-25)
- When self-hosting, no vendor access to data and therefore no data processing agreement; in the cloud it is part of the terms of service — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/installation-and-operation/privacy (as of 2026-09-25)
- Usage log only in Pro and Enterprise, 720 days of retention, no recording in the open-source edition and in Starter — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/usage-and-performance-tools/usage-analytics (as of 2026-09-25)
- Changing the AI assistant's name and icon from Pro — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/ai/customization (as of 2026-09-25)
- Review of AI assistant conversations from Pro, MCP access not recorded — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/ai/usage-auditing (as of 2026-09-28)
- Supported providers for the AI assistant's own key, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Azure, Mistral and OpenRouter — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/ai/settings (as of 2026-09-28)
- Prices for Starter, Pro and Enterprise, price per additional person, usage prices for the AI service, data transforms and add-on storage — https://www.metabase.com/pricing (as of 2026-09-25)
- Plan comparison: assignment of SAML, SCIM, row and column permissions, the usage log and the choice of region to the plans, support within three business days on Starter and Pro, within one business day on Enterprise — https://www.metabase.com/pricing/compare-plans (as of 2026-09-28)
- Support on weekdays from 8 am to 5 pm Pacific time, response times per severity — https://www.metabase.com/enterprise/support (as of 2026-09-25)
- The vendor's estimate of running costs when self-hosting (servers, load balancer, managed database, mail server, together from 112 to 132 US dollars a month) and the reasons to self-host — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/cloud/cloud-vs-self-hosting (as of 2026-09-28)
- Moving from cloud to self-hosting via a snapshot of the application database on request — https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/cloud/migrate/cloud-to-self-hosted (as of 2026-09-25)
- Post-mortem on the August 2026 incident with sequence of events, cause, scope according to the vendor and countermeasures — https://www.metabase.com/blog/vulnerability-what-happened (as of 2026-08-27)
- Security advisory on CVE-2026-72898, SQL injection via an endpoint without authentication, severity critical — https://github.com/metabase/metabase/security/advisories/GHSA-vwf4-m7j8-wcjf (as of 2026-08-06)
- Report on affected companies that disclosed data theft through the flaw — https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/08/10/metabase-zero-day-framework-tally-kilo-code/ (as of 2026-08-10)
- Series B of 30 million US dollars led by Insight Partners with Expa and NEA, and the user count by the company's own account — https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/metabase-raises-30m-in-series-b-financing-to-expand-worldwide-access-to-its-best-in-class-open-source-business-intelligence-platform-301358789.html (as of 2021-08-19)
- Public code repository with creation date, licence split, stars, releases and security advisories — https://github.com/metabase/metabase (as of 2026-09-25)
- Hex's pricing tiers on 25 September 2026 as the comparison benchmark for the AI-native class — https://hex.tech/pricing/ (as of 2026-09-25)