As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates Cluvio 3/5 and Metabase 3.5/5 in Business Intelligence & Dashboards. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Cluvio and 6 pick Metabase. Cluvio scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty). Metabase scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Self-service analysis & shared metrics, Dashboards, charts & interactivity, Access control, administration & portability, plus 3 more). Provenance — Cluvio: EU-Made; Metabase: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Six judges lean Metabase on dashboards and visualization (6.5 vs 4.2), self-service and modelling (7.0 vs 4.0) and governance and portability (7.8 vs 5.8); four lean Metabase, two tie, on sharing and embedding (7.8 vs 7.0); two lean Metabase, four tie, on data connectivity (6.2 vs 5.7); pricing transparency: 7.5 vs 7.0, three lean Metabase, one Cluvio, two tie. Cluvio leads sovereignty, 6.8 to 6.5 — two lean Cluvio, one Metabase, three tie. Connectivity split: Metabase documents 18 database and warehouse connectors but only tool-by-tool guides for Stripe, HubSpot and Shopify; Cluvio's documented connectors stop at databases and files. Sovereignty split: Cluvio's pages state both that European data stays in Europe and that processing occurs outside the EEA including the US; Metabase's verdict weighs air-gapped self-hosting and a Frankfurt region against a California-law contracting entity with no public information on subprocessors or a data processing agreement. The splits are the answer.
Choose Cluvio if
You need queries to run directly on your own databases, hosted on AWS with the account region chosen at signup; sovereignty is the criterion where the bench leans Cluvio's way (two lean Cluvio, one Metabase, three tie; means 6.8 to 6.5).
Your procurement specifies a European vendor: Cluvio comes from Cluvio GmbH of Berlin and is recorded as an EU-made product.
Your data lives in SQL warehouses and your analysts work in SQL and R: the judges working from a SQL warehouse scored Cluvio 6 to 7 on data connectivity.
Choose Metabase if
Your non-SQL business users need a no-SQL query builder and a semantic layer whose metric edits propagate to every question: self-service and modelling went 7.0 to 4.0, six judges leaning Metabase.
You need pivot tables, drill-down or a visual query builder: we found no public information on these for Cluvio, and six judges leaned Metabase on dashboards and visualization (6.5 vs 4.2).
Your permissions must reach row and column level, with an audit log, a REST API and an AGPL self-hosted edition: governance and portability went 7.8 to 5.8, six judges leaning Metabase.
You will embed analytics in your own product and need server-signed embeds, locked parameters for per-viewer data isolation and a React SDK: sharing and embedding went 7.8 to 7.0, four judges leaning Metabase and two tying.
Your stack is databases and warehouses: Metabase queries 18 official connectors live, and data connectivity went 6.2 to 5.7 with two judges leaning Metabase and four tying.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Analyst
The first data hire at a Hamburg e-commerce scale-up, with orders, marketing spend and customer data landing in a PostgreSQL warehouse every night. Answers the same question three times a week because every department computes revenue differently. Wants a SQL editor and a query builder for colleagues, metrics defined once in a model that lives in Git, natural-language questions that show the query they ran, and a way out that does not mean rebuilding every dashboard.
Cluvio
Metabase
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Data sources, connectors & refresh
Cluvio
Sixteen named SQL databases and warehouses — PostgreSQL front and centre — reachable directly, through an SSH tunnel or via an open-source agent that needs no inbound firewall holes, with cache freshness per plan stated down to 10 minutes on Business, is exactly the plumbing my PostgreSQL warehouse needs. The documentation states plainly that data living in different datasources cannot be joined within a single report and points to ETL or federated queries as workarounds, and I found no public information on business-application connectors, a generic REST connector, or Google Sheets beyond support being planned.
Metabase
Eighteen maintained connectors cover the warehouses and databases in my stack — PostgreSQL, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, SQL Server among them — with SSH tunnels, five SSL modes and client certificates for databases behind a firewall, and queries run live so nothing is ingested; CSV upload and Google Sheets sync on cloud plans cover files. The 250-plus business-application pages are setup guides rather than native connectors, and I found no published connector limits per plan.
Dashboards, charts & interactivity
Cluvio
Reports sit on an interactive grid as chart, table or number, with built-in time-range, aggregation and time-zone filters, custom dropdowns, date pickers and even dependent dynamic-SQL filters, plus map charts and auto-refresh for a wall-mounted TV — the filter machinery is genuinely strong. I found no public information on pivot tables, drill-down or drill-through, cross-filtering by clicking, dashboard templates, localised number and date formats, or accessibility of charts, which caps what I can promise readers.
Metabase
Dashboard filters work at dashboard, header and card level with date-range and relative-date operators and multi-select, drill-through opens from any chart point, column header or table cell with break-outs and zoom, cross-filtering and drag-to-filter are documented, and goal lines and progress bars put targets on KPI charts; brand theming of colours and fonts is on Pro and Enterprise. I found no public information on pivot tables, mobile or TV display, or chart accessibility.
Self-service analysis & shared metrics
Cluvio
For me this is home: a SQL editor with autocomplete, syntax highlighting and parameters, R post-processing where SQL runs out, and SQL snippets defined once in a central place whose changes propagate to every referencing report, filter and alert, traced by Find Usages — that attacks my three-departments-three-revenues problem at the SQL level. But colleagues who don't write SQL get only dashboard filters, and I found no public information on a visual query builder, a semantic layer where metrics are governed, Git or dbt versioning, or natural-language questions that show the query they ran.
Metabase
The point-and-click query builder needs no SQL while the SQL editor stays for me, custom expressions act like spreadsheet formulas, and metrics give one official definition — edit it and every question picks up the new calculation — with verification on Pro and Enterprise and measures on published tables synced to Git. Metabot takes plain-English questions on all plans, though I found no public information showing the generated query; metrics are documented as query-builder only and bound to a single data source, and forecasting and Python notebooks are not described.
Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding
Cluvio
Everything my colleagues and external customers need is documented: sharing links without login that can be password-protected, IP-restricted and auto-expiring, scheduled emails as PDF, Excel, image or CSV, SQL alert emails, and iframe embedding driven by short-lived JWT sharing secrets with per-viewer WHERE-clause context restriction, white-labelling and customer-scoped dashboards. I found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams or on comments and annotations, and interactive embedding requires the Business plan.
Metabase
Alerts reach email, Slack and webhooks on schedules down to the minute with Quartz cron and goal-line triggers, with dashboard subscriptions alongside and public links for questions and dashboards. Embedding runs from guest view-only charts to full-app interactive analytics with server-signed tokens, locked parameters so a customer sees only their own orders, white-label theming and a React SDK, from $575 / month on Pro and Enterprise. I found no public information on PDF, PowerPoint or Excel export formats.
Access control, administration & portability
Cluvio
Admin, analyst and viewer roles with user groups, SAML 2.0 single sign-on for Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID and Okta, an audit trail covering logins with IP, queries and every object change, a REST API published with an OpenAPI 3.1 document, and dashboards exportable as JSON that can be recreated from backup — most of what I need before a company-wide rollout. I found no public information on row-level security for internal users (the documented per-user restriction applies to embedded dashboards), SCIM provisioning, column-level security, development and production environments, or a self-hosted edition; content is retained six months after termination.
Metabase
Permissions reach row and column level on Pro and Enterprise, impersonation hands view permissions to database-defined roles, and admins get an audit log and usage analytics. A documented REST API automates administration — explicitly not versioned — staging environments export configs, models and dashboards with stable entity IDs between instances, and the AGPL-licensed open-source edition self-hosts via Docker, JAR or an air-gapped Enterprise build, so leaving means moving files, not rebuilding dashboards. I found no public information on SCIM provisioning or streaming audit logs out.
European sovereignty
Cluvio
A German contracting entity (Cluvio GmbH, Berlin, with a commercial register entry), AWS hosting where the account region is chosen at signup and guaranteed to stay there, an Article 28 data-processing agreement with EU standard contractual clauses, and a stated cache policy — query results held at most 24 hours then purged, encrypted backups at most 30 days — give me a largely European chain. Several subprocessors are named without locations on the captured pages (Sendgrid, PagerDuty, Sentry, Pingdom, NewRelic, Elev.io) while Recurly in the USA processes recurring payments, the certifications listed are AWS's own rather than the vendor's, and the captured pages state both that European data stays in Europe and that processing occurs outside the EEA including the US.
Metabase
The self-hosted edition is documented to keep every query on our own servers — none of the data returned by the database is stored on the vendor's side unless results caching is enabled — with an air-gapped Enterprise deployment available, and the cloud offers a Europe (Frankfurt) region. The contracting entity is Metabase, Inc. in California under California law; SOC 2 Type II and SOC 1 are stated, and I found no published subprocessor list or data processing agreement.
Pricing transparency
Cluvio
The plan comparison is unusually concrete: the free tier's dashboards, datasource, monthly query executions, row limits and query duration, unlimited free viewers on paid plans, additional analysts at €99 per month on Pro and €199 per month on Business, refresh and alert check rates, CSV export size caps, support tiers, a 14-day trial without credit card, a one-month default term and VAT treatment with EU reverse charge. The gap: the captured pages do not state the base price of the Pro or Business subscription itself, and Enterprise is custom, so I cannot compute a full annual cost from them.
Metabase
Every tier is public: Starter $100 / month with the first 5 users included and $6 per user / month after, Pro $575 / month with the first 10 users and $12 per user / month, Enterprise starting at $20,000 / year, and the open-source edition free; usage is priced too — $2 for 1M rows of storage with 1M free, transforms $0.01 per run and advanced transforms $0.02 per run after 1,000 included, AI $3.75 per 1m tokens after an included million. Prices exclude taxes, yearly billing saves 10%, everyone who signs in is a billed user and billing is prorated; the air-gapped deployment carries an unspecified additional fee and I found no published minimum term.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Cluvio
Metabase
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates Metabase higher: 3.5/5 against 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Cluvio and 6 pick Metabase. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Cluvio or Metabase European?
Cluvio is European (EU-Made). Metabase is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Cluvio and Metabase store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Cluvio: Default not stated; pages mention the EU and the US. Metabase: its pages as captured do not say.
Do Cluvio and Metabase have a free plan?
As of 1 Nov 2026, Cluvio’s own pages state a free plan; Metabase’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.