Cluvio vs Metabase

Cluvio

Sixteen SQL databases and warehouses are documented, each reachable directly, through an SSH tunnel or through an open-source agent, with CSV and Excel uploadable as static tables and the minimum refresh interval stated per plan. The documented connector list stops at databases and files — I found no ready-made connector for a CRM, accounting, help desk or project-management application — and the documentation states that data living in different datasources cannot be used directly within a single report, recommending an ETL tool instead. For a company like mine that lives in HubSpot, its accounting tool and its help desk, that means standing up a database and a pipeline before this shows anything.

Metabase

Strong live connectivity to 18 official database and warehouse connectors plus CSV upload and Google Sheets sync on cloud plans, with SSH tunnels and SSL modes documented for secured databases. But for a company like mine running HubSpot, accounting and a help desk, the pages show only tool-by-tool guides rather than ready-made connectors, and we found no public information on a generic REST connector or a stated minimum refresh interval.

Cluvio

Dashboards are reports on an interactive grid with built-in time-range, aggregation and time-zone filters, custom dropdowns and date pickers, dependent dropdowns fed by SQL, saved filter defaults, map charts, chart, table or number displays and auto-refresh for a wall-mounted TV, with current mobile browsers supported. We found no public information on pivot tables, drill-down, templates for common sources, or localised number and date formats, which keeps this below the broader chart-library level.

Metabase

Impressive interactivity: dashboard, header and card-level filter widgets with date ranges and relative dates, drill-through menus, cross-filtering, drag-to-filter on time series, goal lines and progress bars, plus brand theming with colours and fonts on Pro and Enterprise. We found no public information on a mobile view, templates for common sources, pivot tables or chart accessibility.

Cluvio

There is a real SQL editor with autocomplete and parameterised queries, R for post-processing results, automatic query and chart suggestions, and SQL snippets defined once and reused across reports, filters and alerts with usage counts and a find-usages view. But there is no visual query builder for people who do not write SQL, and we found no public information on a governed semantic model, natural-language questions, forecasting or version-controlled metric definitions — so with nobody whose job is data, new questions still fall on someone who can write a query.

Metabase

A point-and-click query builder that needs no SQL, custom expressions like CountIf, a SQL editor for specialists, and a semantic layer in Data Studio where metrics define the official way to calculate important numbers — reused across questions, verifiable on Pro and Enterprise, with measures on published tables synced to Git and a plain-English AI assistant on all plans. We found no public information on forecasting, anomaly detection or notebook analysis.

Cluvio

Unlimited employees can view for free on the paid plans, dashboards go out by secure links that need no login and can be password-protected, IP-restricted and auto-expiring, scheduled emails deliver PDF, Excel, image or CSV attachments on a recurring schedule, and SQL alerts watch conditions on a schedule — that is my whole-team Monday summary sorted. Embedding is documented in depth, from iframes and colour schemes to signed JWT sharing secrets, per-viewer parameter restriction, per-customer context filtering, white-labelling and sample code in seven languages. We found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams, or on comments and annotations.

Metabase

My Monday summary is achievable: alerts and dashboard subscriptions to email, Slack and webhooks, schedulable down to the minute with custom cron, plus public links. The embedding side is deep — locked parameters so a customer only sees their own rows, white-label styling, guest embeds and a React SDK — with embedding priced from $575 per month on Pro and Enterprise; we found no public information on comments or annotations on dashboards.

Cluvio

Admin, analyst and viewer roles with user groups, SAML 2.0 single sign-on for Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID and Okta on the paid plans, two-factor authentication, an audit log of logins with IP addresses and every object change, a documented public API with a published OpenAPI specification, and dashboards exportable as JSON backups give me enough to roll this out to forty people. We found no public information on column-level security, SCIM provisioning, separate development and production environments, or a self-hosted edition.

Metabase

Permissions down to database, table, schema, row and column level on Pro and above, database-role impersonation, an audit log, usage analytics, staging environments with export of configs, models and dashboards, a documented REST API with a downloadable OpenAPI 3.1.0 specification, and a self-hosted Docker and JAR edition licensed under AGPL. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning or documented deletion of every copy on termination.

Cluvio

The contract is with Cluvio GmbH of Berlin under a German commercial register entry, hosting runs on named AWS infrastructure with the account region chosen at signup and a guarantee that data processed on the account stays in that region, a GDPR data-processing agreement can be signed in the account settings, standard contractual clauses cover third-country processing, and query-result caches are stated to sit in a secured private network and be purged after 24 hours. The subprocessor list names Recurly in the USA and Braintree in Luxembourg but lists Sendgrid, PagerDuty, Sentry, Pingdom and NewRelic without locations, the privacy policy confirms processing outside the EEA including the US, and the ISO 27001 and SOC listings on the security page are AWS's own compliance. We found no public information on a self-hosted edition.

Metabase

Cloud hosting is available in Europe (Frankfurt) with a documented region-switch procedure, a stated GDPR posture with SOC 2 Type II, and a self-hosted edition where the data stays on our own servers. But the contracting entity is Metabase, Inc. under California law, and we found no public information on a data processing agreement, an EU representative or a subprocessor list with locations — the security page describes vendor oversight without naming the vendors.

Cluvio

I can budget the whole thing from one page: each additional analyst at €99 per month on Pro and €199 on Business with included and maximum analyst counts, unlimited viewer users, and every limit published per plan — dashboards, datasources, refresh rate down to ten minutes on Business, query rows, query duration, schedules, alerts and CSV export size — alongside a free single-user plan, a 14-day Business trial with no credit card, a one-month default term and VAT treatment with EU reverse charge. The Enterprise tier is 'custom' and we found no public price for the HIPAA add-on, so that corner still needs a conversation.

Metabase

I can compute my annual cost from the pricing page: Starter at $100 per month with the first 5 users included and $6 per user per month after, Pro at $575 per month with 10 included and $12 per user per month, Enterprise starting at $20,000 per year, a free open-source edition, a 10% yearly saving, prorated billing, and priced overages for transforms ($0.01 per run after 1,000 included), AI tokens ($3.75 per 1m tokens) and storage ($2 for 1M rows, first million free). We found no public information on the minimum term, self-hosted paid licence prices or the air-gap fee, and every person who signs in counts as a billed user.