Metabase is one of the most widely adopted open source BI tools, with over 60,000 companies running it for internal analytics and embedded dashboards. On the surface, the pricing looks straightforward: a free open source edition, two cloud plans and a custom enterprise tier.
In practice the billing mechanics catch teams out. Per-user fees compound as headcount grows, feature gating forces expensive tier jumps, and the open source “free” version carries real infrastructure costs that never appear in the initial budget. This article maps every Metabase plan at verified 2026 prices, shows the per-user math at scale, and explains exactly what each tier locks and unlocks.
Metabase Pricing at a Glance (2026)
Metabase offers four plans. Two are cloud-hosted and fully managed. Two support self-hosting.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Included users | What it unlocks |
| Open Source | Free | Free | Unlimited | Core BI, all connectors, static embedding. AGPL license, self-hosted only. |
| Starter | $100 | $90 | 5 (+$6/user) | Managed cloud, SAML SSO, email/Slack alerts, static embedding without badge. |
| Pro | $575 | $517.50 | 10 (+$12/user) | Row-level security, interactive embedding, white-labeling, serialization, usage analytics. |
| Enterprise | Custom | From ~$20K/yr | Custom | 1-day SLA + named engineer, single-tenant/air-gapped deployment, procurement support, Metabot AI included. |
Annual billing saves 10% on base fees. Per-user charges on annual plans are billed at $65/year per additional user on Starter and $130/year per additional user on Pro.
Open Source Plan: Free, But Not Actually Free
The Open Source edition is free to download and self-host under the AGPL v3 license. You get the full core feature set: the visual query builder, unlimited dashboards, 20+ database connectors and static embedding with a “Powered by Metabase” badge.
What it does not include: SSO beyond Google, row-level security, column-level permissions, interactive embedding, audit logs, white-labeling or any support beyond community forums.
The infrastructure overhead is real and frequently underestimated. A minimal production setup on AWS or GCP costs $100 to $200 per month in compute, storage and backups. Factor in quarterly upgrades and engineering time for incident response, and the open source version can easily run $15,000 to $20,000 per year in total operating cost before a single analyst logs in.
For a small team with strong DevOps capacity and straightforward internal reporting needs, Open Source is a reasonable starting point. For most growing teams, the hidden overhead narrows the gap with managed plans faster than expected.
One question worth asking before committing: are you solving a dashboarding problem or a data access problem? If the core need is live data from a CRM, ERP or data warehouse turned into a shareable dashboard, there are lighter paths. Coefficient’s Vibe Dashboards lets you describe a dashboard in plain English and have AI build it from your live spreadsheet data, with no server setup and no per-user fees. More on that at the end of this article.
Starter Plan ($100/mo): Clean Hosting, Limited Governance
The Starter plan is cloud-only, fully managed by Metabase, and priced at $100/month for up to five users. Each additional user costs $6/month, prorated daily.
What Starter includes:
• Managed cloud hosting with automatic upgrades, backups and monitoring
• All Metabase database connectors
• SAML-based SSO
• Scheduled email and Slack alerts
• Static embedding without the Metabase badge
What Starter does not include:
• Row-level or column-level security
• Interactive embedding for customer-facing analytics
• White-labeling, custom colors or fonts
• Staging environments or serialization
• Usage analytics
• Priority support (3 business-day SLA, same as Pro)
Per-user cost scaling on Starter:
| Users | Starter (monthly) | Starter (annual) | Effective/user/yr |
| 5 (base) | $100/mo | $1,080/yr | $216 |
| 10 | $130/mo | ~$1,470/yr | $147 |
| 25 | $220/mo | ~$2,520/yr | $100.80 |
| 50 | $370/mo | ~$4,200/yr | $84 |
| 100 | $670/mo | ~$7,680/yr | $76.80 |
Billing mechanics: charges are calculated daily and prorated. Metabase’s billing documentation confirms that adding a user on day 15 of a 30-day month charges exactly half the monthly rate. On annual plans, per-user true-ups are billed quarterly.
One structural issue: every person who signs into Metabase counts as a paid user, including those who only read reports. For teams with a large viewer-to-builder ratio, the per-user model adds up faster than the headline price suggests. Teams that share live dashboards through Coefficient Vibe Dashboards avoid this entirely, since Coefficient carries no per-viewer fee at any plan level.
Pro Plan ($575/mo): The Governance Tier
Pro unlocks the features that make Metabase viable for organizations with sensitive data, multiple teams or customer-facing analytics requirements.
Key unlocks over Starter:
• Row-level security: restrict which data rows a user sees based on their attributes
• Interactive embedding: full Metabase dashboards inside your product with drill-down and filtering
• White-labeling: custom colors, fonts and logo throughout
• Serialization: version-controlled staging and production environments
• Usage Analytics: query performance and user activity monitoring
The critical point confirmed on Metabase’s pricing page: if you need any one of row-level security, interactive embedding or full SSO, there is no intermediate option. You go from $100/month (Starter) to $575/month (Pro). For a 10-user team, that is from $130/month to $575/month.
Per-user cost scaling on Pro:
| Users | Pro (monthly) | Pro (annual) | Effective/user/yr |
| 10 (base) | $575/mo | $6,210/yr | $621 |
| 25 | $755/mo | ~$8,190/yr | $327.60 |
| 50 | $1,055/mo | ~$11,400/yr | $228 |
| 100 | $1,655/mo | ~$17,880/yr | $178.80 |
Interactive embedding viewers count as paid users on Pro. A SaaS product with 500 customer-facing dashboard viewers would pay roughly $74,000/year in Pro user fees alone, before infrastructure or support costs. Source: Metabase pricing FAQ.
For internal reporting at scale, where most users are viewers rather than builders, the per-seat model is the primary cost driver. Coefficient’s Vibe Reporting builds shareable live web dashboards with no viewer fees, which makes the cost comparison materially different for teams with ten builders and fifty readers.
Enterprise Plan (From ~$20,000/yr): Support and Scale Pricing
Enterprise pricing is custom and negotiated with Metabase’s sales team. Vendr’s 2026 buyer transaction data shows a median Enterprise contract of around $39,000/year, with entry-level contracts typically starting at $20,000/year. Multi-year commitments (two to three years) commonly unlock 10 to 20% discounts.
What Enterprise adds over Pro:
• Priority support with a named customer success engineer and a 1-day email SLA (vs 3 business days on Pro and Starter)
• Single-tenant or air-gapped deployment for strict compliance or data residency requirements
• Procurement and compliance assistance: Metabase completes security questionnaires as part of onboarding
• Custom per-user pricing for interactive embedding, making large viewer counts more cost-effective
• Metabot AI included at no additional cost
On the question of features between Pro and Enterprise, Metabase’s own FAQ is direct: “Feature wise: zero.” Pro and Enterprise have identical feature sets. Enterprise is a support, procurement and volume-pricing decision, not a feature decision. If your evaluation is driven by governance requirements, those are already in Pro.
At 100+ users, Enterprise’s custom volume pricing often makes it cheaper than Pro’s published per-user rate. If your team has crossed 75 users on Pro, requesting an Enterprise quote before your next renewal is worth the time.
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How Per-User Costs Scale: Starter vs Pro
Per Metabase’s billing documentation, charges are calculated daily. Annual plan true-ups are billed quarterly. The initial annual payment is non-refundable.
| Team size | Starter/mo | Pro/mo | Monthly gap | Context |
| 10 users | $130 | $575 | +$445 | Only justified if you need RLS, interactive embedding or full SSO. |
| 25 users | $220 | $755 | +$535 | Pro per-user drops to ~$30; still a large jump from Starter. |
| 50 users | $370 | $1,055 | +$685 | At this size, start negotiating. Enterprise may be cheaper. |
| 100 users | $670 | $1,655 | +$985 | Vendr data: Enterprise at ~$39K/yr often beats Pro list price. |
The break-even logic is binary: if your team needs RLS, interactive embedding or full SSO, the $475/month jump from Starter to Pro is unavoidable. At 100+ users, Vendr’s dataset shows Enterprise negotiation almost always beats Pro’s published rate.
Self-Hosted vs Cloud: Honest TCO Comparison
Cloud-hosted plans include all infrastructure, upgrades, backups and support. What you see on the pricing page is what you pay.
Self-hosted Pro carries the same license fee as cloud Pro, plus your own infrastructure. A minimal production setup on AWS or GCP runs $100 to $200/month. Add engineering time for quarterly upgrades, security patching and incident response, and the real annual cost typically exceeds what the license fee implies. Self-hosting makes economic sense with a dedicated platform team, strict data residency requirements, or existing cloud spend commitments that absorb the overhead. For most teams without a dedicated data engineer, managed cloud Pro is cheaper in total cost of ownership.
For teams whose reporting workflow lives inside Google Sheets or Excel, the hosting comparison is moot. Coefficient installs as a browser extension with no server infrastructure on either side. There is nothing to host, maintain or upgrade.
What Each Plan Locks or Unlocks
This is the table most Metabase pricing guides skip. It shows exactly which tier you need for a given capability.
| Feature | Open Source | Starter | Pro | Enterprise |
| SSO (SAML/LDAP) | No | Basic | Full | Full |
| Row-level security | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Interactive embedding | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| White-labeling | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Staging environments | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Usage analytics | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Metabot AI | Basic SQL only | +$100/mo add-on | +$100/mo add-on | Included |
| Support SLA | Community only | 3 business days | 3 business days | 1-day + named engineer |
| Air-gapped deploy | No | No | No | Yes |
Source: Metabase pricing and billing documentation, verified April 2026. Any governance requirement (RLS, audit logs, white-labeling) requires Pro at minimum. Priority SLA and air-gapped deployment require Enterprise.
Is Metabase Worth the Cost? A Direct Answer by Team Type
Open Source: good fit for developers and small technical teams with DevOps capacity and basic internal reporting needs. Budget for $15,000 to $20,000 in hidden annual costs before treating it as free.
Starter: the right call for teams under 15 users that need managed hosting and clean dashboards without governance requirements. Watch the per-user math as the team grows.
Pro: justified for product analytics teams, SaaS companies building embedded dashboards, and organizations requiring row-level access control. If you need any one of RLS, interactive embedding or white-labeling, Pro is the minimum viable tier.
Enterprise: appropriate for large organizations with compliance requirements, dedicated data teams and single-tenant deployment needs, or any team at 100+ users where custom volume pricing beats Pro’s list rate.
The most common sticking point: teams that outgrow Starter but cannot justify $20,000 per year for Enterprise end up on Pro. That is fine, as long as they are genuinely using the features that justify the $445 monthly premium.
Coefficient Web Dashboards: Build Live Dashboards Without a BI Platform
Metabase is the right tool when you need SQL-based querying, cross-database joins, or embedded customer-facing analytics at scale. But a significant portion of teams evaluating Metabase have a simpler underlying need: a clean, shareable dashboard built from live data, without maintaining a BI platform.
Coefficient’s Vibe Reporting is built for that. You describe your dashboard in plain English, and AI builds it as a live, shareable web dashboard directly from your Google Sheets or Excel data. Drag and drop to reposition charts, edit further with AI, then share a live link with a preview on Slack or email. No SQL. No server setup. No per-user viewer fees.
The data layer underneath is where Coefficient connects to Metabase’s core use cases. Coefficient pulls live data from Salesforce, HubSpot, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Snowflake and 100+ other systems into your spreadsheet on automated refresh schedules. Vibe Reporting then turns that live spreadsheet data into a shareable web dashboard that updates automatically.
Teams using Coefficient include Miro, Klaviyo, Mutiny and Unity. Pricing starts free, with paid plans from $49/month and no per-user fees at any tier.
If your team’s reporting need is building dashboards on top of data from your existing systems, and you already work in spreadsheets, Coefficient Vibe Reporting is worth comparing against the full cost of standing up and maintaining Metabase.
Metabase Pricing FAQs
Does Metabase charge per dashboard or per query?
No. Per Metabase: “You can make as many dashboards, visualizations, collections, queries as you like and connect to as many data sources as you have. Metabase costs the same no matter what you make.” The only cost variable is user count.
Can I downgrade from Pro to Starter mid-contract?
On monthly billing, yes, at the end of the current period. On annual billing, downgrading typically requires waiting for renewal. Annual payments are non-refundable, so plan changes should be evaluated before the renewal date, not after.
Does annual billing auto-renew?
Yes. Per Metabase’s billing documentation, annual plans auto-renew and the initial annual payment is non-refundable. Per-user true-ups on annual plans are charged quarterly.
Is the open source version really free forever?
The software is free under AGPL v3 with no license fees. You pay only for your own infrastructure and engineering time. Note that AGPL requires you to share any source code modifications with users of your deployment, which matters for SaaS companies embedding a customized version.
Does Metabot AI cost extra?
Yes, on Starter and Pro plans. Metabot AI is an optional add-on at $100/month for 500 natural language query requests. It is included in Enterprise contracts. If AI-driven data exploration is central to your team’s workflow, factor this into your plan comparison.
What is actually different between Pro and Enterprise?
Per Metabase’s own FAQ: “Feature wise: zero.” The differences are a 1-day email SLA and named customer success engineer (vs 3-day SLA on Pro), procurement and compliance assistance, custom volume pricing for large user counts, optional single-tenant or air-gapped hosting, and Metabot AI included rather than as a paid add-on.
