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 Finance Controller
Head of controlling at a 250-person machine builder in Baden-Württemberg. Closes the month from DATEV, the ERP, the CRM and a dozen Excel files that colleagues still mail around, and spends two days a month copying numbers into the management report. Wants the sources connected and refreshed on a schedule, one definition of contribution margin on every page, a report that prints cleanly for the advisory board, and data that stays where the auditors expect it.
Cluvio
Metabase
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Data sources, connectors & refresh
Cluvio
Sixteen SQL databases and warehouses are listed by name, queries run live on our own databases, and the agent, SSH tunnel and IP allow-list give three documented ways to reach a database behind our firewall, with limits and refresh intervals stated per plan down to ten minutes. What holds it back for my month-end: I found no public information on connectors to accounting, ERP or CRM systems, Google Sheets is described only as planned, and the documentation states that data living in different datasources cannot be used together in one report — I would have to load everything into a single warehouse first.
Metabase
The published connector list names eighteen maintained database and warehouse connectors plus CSV upload and Google Sheets sync on cloud, all queried live with the data staying in our database, an SSH tunnel for anything behind our firewall, and joins, models and scheduled model refresh for preparation. What holds me back: the catalog covers databases and warehouses rather than accounting, ERP or CRM systems — Stripe, Google Analytics, HubSpot and Shopify appear as guide topics — and I found no public information on a generic REST connector, stated refresh intervals, or per-plan connector limits.
Dashboards, charts & interactivity
Cluvio
An interactive grid of charts, tables and number tiles with built-in time-range, aggregation and time-zone filters, dependent dropdowns, and auto-refresh for a wall-mounted TV would carry my KPIs, and dashboards or single reports export as PDF or image for the advisory board pack. I found no public information on pivot tables, target or prior-period comparisons on KPI tiles, drill-down, templates or localised German number formats.
Metabase
Drill-through, cross-filtering, drag-to-filter and custom click behaviour are documented in real depth, with dashboard-wide filters, date ranges down to quarter and relative dates, goal lines and progress bars, and theming to our own colours on Pro and Enterprise. But I found no public information on pivot tables, chart templates, a mobile view, print-ready paginated output for the advisory board, or accessibility — and as the man who prints the management report, that silence matters.
Self-service analysis & shared metrics
Cluvio
SQL snippets let me define the contribution-margin calculation once and reuse it across reports, alerts and filters, with a usage search showing every query that references it and changes propagating automatically — exactly the one-definition discipline I need, backed by a SQL editor with completion and parameters plus R for post-processing. But analysis is documented as running through SQL and R, and I found no public information on a visual query builder for colleagues who do not write SQL, a semantic layer, Git versioning or natural-language questions.
Metabase
This is the one definition of contribution margin I am after: a semantic layer where metrics and measures are defined once, verified on Pro and Enterprise, synced to Git, surfaced in the query builder, and updated in every question the moment the definition changes — beside a no-SQL query builder, a SQL editor and custom expressions. It falls short of the top because metrics do not work across joins or nested queries and live only in the query builder, and I found no public information on forecasting, anomaly detection with a stated method, or Python and notebook analysis.
Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding
Cluvio
Sharing with teammates, links protected by password, IP restriction and auto-expiry, recurring email delivery as PDF, Excel or image, and scheduled SQL alerts would serve my board pack well. Embedding is genuinely product-grade — signed JWT secrets, per-user restriction through a WHERE-clause context parameter, postMessage control and sample code in seven languages with white-labelling — though I found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams or on comments and annotations.
Metabase
Alerts go out by email, Slack or webhook on schedules from every minute to a custom Quartz cron, with goal-line and progress-bar triggers, and the embedding side is a product in itself: signed guest and SSO embeds, locked parameters so a customer sees only their own orders, a React SDK, white-labelling and multi-tenant separation, priced from $575 / month. I hold back because I found no public information on PDF or Excel export of results, on the format dashboard subscriptions deliver, or on comments and annotations.
Access control, administration & portability
Cluvio
Admin, analyst and viewer roles with user groups, SAML single sign-on with named identity providers, audit logging of logins with IP address and every object change, a documented REST API with an OpenAPI document, JSON dashboard backups and per-dashboard usage tracking cover most of what I must show our auditors. I found no public information on SCIM provisioning, column-level security, separate development and production environments, or a self-hosted edition of the platform itself.
Metabase
Permissions reach down to table, row and column, impersonation defers access control to the database's own roles — which our auditors will appreciate — and there is an audit log with usage analytics, a documented REST API with an OpenAPI specification, staging-to-production export with stable entity IDs, and a self-hosted AGPL edition with an air-gapped option. Short of the top: the API is explicitly not versioned, and I found no public information on SCIM provisioning, while single sign-on is documented without naming its protocol.
European sovereignty
Cluvio
A German GmbH with a commercial register entry, an EU region chosen at signup with a guarantee that the account's data stays in it, and queries run on our own databases with results cached at most 24 hours — that is a chain I can explain to the auditors, with a data processing agreement available and standard contractual clauses for third-country processing. The ISO 27001 and SOC listings on the security page are AWS's own compliance, the security page names several subprocessors without stating their locations, and the privacy policy confirms processing outside the EEA including the US.
Metabase
Self-hosting is documented to the point of an air-gapped Enterprise edition, with the application under AGPL, data staying on our own servers, open-source instances that never need to call home, SOC 2 Type II and SOC 1 stated, and a Europe (Frankfurt) cloud region available — that is the customer's own chain, and it is where our data would stay. The counterweights are a Californian contracting entity under California law, and I found no public information on a data processing agreement, a subprocessor list with locations, or where cloud-side caches land beyond the statement that nothing is stored unless results caching is enabled.
Pricing transparency
Cluvio
Every limit is public per plan — dashboards, datasources, schedules, alert rates, refresh interval, result rows and CSV export size — additional analysts are priced at €99 per month in the Pro plan and €199 in the Business plan, viewers are unlimited and free on the paid plans, the default term is one month and the VAT and reverse-charge rule is published. The captured pages give no base monthly price for the paid plans themselves, and the Enterprise tier is custom.
Metabase
From the pricing page alone I can budget the year: Starter at $100 / month with the first five users then $6 per user / month, Pro at $575 / month with ten then $12 per user / month, storage at $2 for 1M rows with 1M free, transforms at $0.01 per run after 1,000 included, AI at $3.75 per 1m tokens after 1m included, embedding from $575 / month, a 10% yearly discount, prices excluding taxes, and per-user billing prorated. What stops full computability: Enterprise is custom above its $20,000 / year floor, the air-gapped edition carries an additional fee without a figure, and I found no public information on minimum term or setup costs.
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.