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 IT Administrator
IT lead at a mid-sized healthcare supplier whose reports touch customer, pricing and employee data. Is asked to approve a BI tool after a department has already started a trial. Reads where extracts and caches are stored, whether the tool reaches the ERP database through a gateway or wants it opened to the internet, whether sales sees only its own region, and whether single sign-on and an audit log come with the plan or behind a sales call. Prefers an edition they can run themselves.
Cluvio
Metabase
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Data sources, connectors & refresh
Cluvio
Sixteen named SQL databases and warehouses connect directly, through an SSH tunnel or via an open-source agent that calls out from inside my network, so I would not have to open the ERP database to the internet. Refresh and cache behaviour is documented down to per-plan minimum intervals, query durations and row limits. The documentation itself states that data living in different datasources cannot be combined within a single report, and we found no public information on connectors for business applications or a generic REST interface — Google Sheets is listed only as planned.
Metabase
Eighteen maintained connectors cover PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks and more, with eleven community drivers that work only when self-hosting; queries run live against our databases and nothing is stored unless we enable caching, which is the architecture I want for the ERP system. An SSH tunnel, five SSL modes up to verify-full with client certificates, and IP allowlisting are documented, joins and multi-level aggregation combine sources in one question, and models can be persisted and refreshed on a schedule we define. We found no public information on a generic REST or custom connector SDK or per-plan connector limits, and the integrations catalog offers tool-by-tool guides for Stripe, Google Analytics, HubSpot and Shopify rather than native connectors to business applications.
Dashboards, charts & interactivity
Cluvio
Dashboards are interactive grids of SQL-driven reports shown as chart, table or number, with map charts, built-in time-range, aggregation and time-zone filters, dependent dropdowns with dynamic options, saved filter defaults and auto-refresh for wall-mounted TVs. We found no public information on pivot tables, drill-down, cross-filtering, chart templates for common sources, or localised number and date formats. That is a solid working dashboard tool but the evidence stops short of the richer interactivity an organisation reads daily.
Metabase
Interactivity is documented in depth: clicking a chart, column header or table cell opens a drill-through menu with Filter by this value, See these records, Break out by and Zoom in, alongside cross-filtering, drag-to-filter on time series, custom click behaviour to other questions or dashboards, and dashboard-wide filter widgets of date, location, number, text and boolean types with defaults, required values and per-user scope. Charts evidenced include bar, line and area series with goal lines, histograms, progress bars against a goal, and maps with zoom-in. We found no public information on the breadth of the chart library, pivot tables, mobile or TV display, templates, or accessibility of the charts.
Self-service analysis & shared metrics
Cluvio
Analysts get a real SQL editor with autocomplete and parameterised queries, R post-processing on top of SQL results, and SQL snippets maintained in one central definition with parameters, nesting and usage tracking — a genuine shared-definition layer. Viewer accounts can only use filters on published dashboards, so self-service for non-analysts rests on filters alone. We found no public information on a visual query builder, natural-language questions, Git or dbt integration, or certified datasets.
Metabase
A point-and-click query builder for business users sits beside a SQL editor, with custom expressions like CountIf and SumIf, joins, multi-level aggregation, preview-as-you-build and fifteen saved versions per question. Metrics and measures form a semantic layer with official shared formulas that immediately propagate to every question using them, verification on Pro and Enterprise, a metrics explorer for breakouts, comparisons and maths between metrics, and Git sync for measures on published tables; Metabot answers questions in plain English. We found no public information on forecasting or anomaly detection methods, notebooks or Python, or whether AI answers show the query they ran.
Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding
Cluvio
Sharing covers user groups inside the organisation, links with password, IP restriction and auto-expiry, scheduled email delivery as PDF, Excel, image or CSV, and SQL alerts that email when a condition applies. Embedding via iframe is well documented: JWT sharing secrets signed with the organisation's embed secret, per-user row restriction through a WHERE clause such as salesrep id equal to user id, hidden reports, postMessage control, white-label styling and sample code in seven languages. We found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams, or on comments and annotations.
Metabase
Alerts deliver by email, Slack or webhook on schedules down to the minute or a custom Quartz cron, with goal-line and progress-bar triggers, one-time alerts and admin bulk management, and dashboard subscriptions carry results by email and Slack. Embedding is thoroughly documented: view-only and interactive charts, guest and full-app embedding, a React SDK, locked parameters set server-side so an embed on customer 13's account page returns only customer 13's orders, per-viewer data permissions on SSO embeds, white-label styling, and embedding priced from $575 / month. We found no public information on the file formats of downloadable results, or on comments and annotations on dashboards.
Access control, administration & portability
Cluvio
There is a detailed audit trail of logins with IP address, executed queries and every object change; SAML 2.0 single sign-on for Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID and Okta is included from the Pro plan; and a public REST API with an OpenAPI 3.1 specification and a command-line tool exists, with dashboards exportable and re-importable as JSON. Row-level restriction works through user-context snippets and embedding filters rather than a stated column-level capability, and audit logs reach admins on request. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, development and production environments, or a self-hosted edition I could run myself.
Metabase
Permissions reach database, table, schema, row and column level with groups and collection controls, a comprehensive audit log with alerts on unusual activity, usage analytics, and a documented REST API with OpenAPI spec and API keys, while SSO with a provider and required 2FA arrive from Pro upward. Row and column security is documented in detail, including its own stated limits — it applies to query-builder questions, native SQL results are not secured, public links are not covered — and impersonation pushes permissions down to our database roles. The application is AGPL-licensed, self-hosting by Docker, JAR or Podman has its own documentation, and staging environments with exported configs, models and dashboards plus stable entity IDs support moving content between instances; we found no public information on SCIM provisioning or on streaming audit logs to our own systems.
European sovereignty
Cluvio
The contracting entity is Cluvio GmbH of Berlin with a commercial register entry and German VAT ID, hosting is on AWS with the account region chosen at signup and guaranteed, and analytical queries run on my own databases with results cached at most 24 hours in Cluvio's secured private network before being purged. A GDPR data processing agreement can be signed in the account settings, and subprocessors are named — Recurly in the USA and Schufa among them — with EU standard contractual clauses stated as the safeguard for processing outside the EEA. Several subprocessor locations are unstated, and the ISO and SOC listings shown are AWS's own certifications.
Metabase
The contracting entity is Metabase, Inc. under California law, but Metabase Cloud offers a Europe (Frankfurt) region, each cloud customer runs in its own containers with no shared clusters, and unless results caching is enabled none of the data returned by our database is stored on the vendor's side. The open-source edition we would run keeps everything on our own servers — "Your data stays on your servers—and in your control. We never look at or copy your data. Period." — with an air-gapped edition available on Enterprise for an additional fee. Subprocessors are reviewed before use and at least annually but are not listed with their locations on these pages, we found no public information on a published data processing agreement, and we found no public information on where the paid AI service processes data.
Pricing transparency
Cluvio
The free tier is fully specified at €0 for a single user, viewer seats are unlimited and free on the paid plans, additional analysts are priced at €99 per month on Pro and €199 on Business, and per-plan quotas for dashboards, datasources, schedules, alert rates, refresh rates, query duration, result rows and CSV export size are all published alongside a 14-day trial without credit card. VAT treatment and the one-month default term are stated. We found no public information on the base subscription price of the paid plans in the captured pages, and Enterprise pricing is listed as custom.
Metabase
Every plan is public: Starter at $100 / month with $6 per user / month after the first five included, Pro at $575 / month with $12 per user / month after the first ten included, Enterprise starting at $20,000 / year, storage at $2 for 1M rows beyond 1M free, transforms at $0.01 per run and advanced transforms at $0.02 per run after 1,000 included runs, AI at $3.75 per 1m tokens after 1M included, a 10% yearly saving, prorated billing, a free open-source edition, a 14-day trial and prices that exclude any applicable taxes. Everyone who signs in counts as a billed user with non-transferrable licences, which is a clear scaling rule I can budget from. Enterprise beyond its floor and the air-gapped option are priced by agreement, and we found no public information on a 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.