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 SaaS Product Lead
Product lead at a Vienna software company selling fleet management to 600 business customers, each of whom asks for reports the team keeps building by hand. Wants dashboards embedded in the product under its own brand, every customer seeing only their own rows, customers building their own views without a ticket, and an embedding licence whose cost they can put into the product's price before signing.
Cluvio
Metabase
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Data sources, connectors & refresh
Cluvio
Sixteen named SQL databases and warehouses, each with direct, SSH-tunnel and Cluvio Agent connection modes, plus CSV and Excel upload as static tables, covers our fleet database, and the open-source agent plus IP allow-listing reaches databases behind a firewall. Refresh intervals are published per plan (24 hours, 1 hour, 10 minutes) and queries run live on the customer's own database. The captured pages state that data in different datasources cannot be combined in a single report, and we found no public information on connectors to business applications or a generic REST connector; Google Sheets is only planned.
Metabase
Eighteen official connectors cover every database my fleet platform would need — PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks — queried live so reports are never stale, plus CSV upload, Google Sheets sync on cloud plans, SSH tunnelling and a transforms layer for light preparation. Eleven community drivers extend the list but only when self-hosting, and we found no public information on a generic REST connector, incremental refresh, or per-plan connector limits.
Dashboards, charts & interactivity
Cluvio
The documented interactivity is genuinely strong: SQL reports on an interactive grid, built-in time-range, aggregation and time-zone filters, dependent dropdowns fed by dynamic SQL, saved filter defaults, map charts and auto-refresh for a wall-mounted TV. But we found no public information on pivot tables, drill-down, cross-filtering, KPI target comparisons, chart templates or localised number and date formats, which is what I would need for customer-facing boards.
Metabase
Dashboard filters are documented in real depth — date ranges and relative dates, location, multi-select, required filters with defaults at dashboard, header and card level — and interactivity goes well beyond basics: cross-filtering, drill-through menus with break-out and zoom, custom click behaviour to other dashboards, drag-to-filter, plus brand theming with custom colours and fonts on Pro. We found no public information on pivot tables, mobile or TV display, templates, or accessibility of charts.
Self-service analysis & shared metrics
Cluvio
Analysis is SQL-first with an editor offering autocomplete and parameterised queries, R post-processing for the hard parts, and a snippet library of centrally maintained SQL fragments with parameters, nesting and usage tracking whose changes propagate to every referencing report — a real shared-definition layer my team could standardise on. We found no public information on a visual query builder for non-SQL business users, natural-language questions, forecasting or metric definitions under version control.
Metabase
The point-and-click query builder needs no SQL, custom expressions work like spreadsheet formulas, and the semantic layer in Data Studio defines metrics and measures once with Git sync, verified metrics on Pro and a Metrics Explorer — exactly the mechanism that stops six hundred customers each inventing their own churn formula. The documented limits matter: metrics work only in the query builder and only on their original data source, and we found no public information on notebooks, Python, forecasting or anomaly detection, or whether the AI assistant shows the query it ran.
Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding
Cluvio
This is the closest match to my exact problem: context-restricted dashboards parameterised per application user through a WHERE-clause filter, short-lived JWT sharing secrets signed with an organisation embed secret, sample code in seven languages, postMessage control of filters, white-labelling with colour schemes and background configuration, and dashboards scoped per customer. Viewer seats are unlimited and free on the Pro and Business plans, so embedding cost rides on plan seats — though interactive embedding and per-user context restriction start on the Business plan. We found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams or on comments and annotations.
Metabase
This is the closest thing to my wish list I have read: server-signed JWT embeds with locked parameters so an embed on customer 13's account page returns only customer 13's orders, guest and full-app embedding, a React SDK plus a no-code web-component path, white-label theming, custom domains, an embeddable AI chat, and alerts to email, Slack or webhooks on schedules down to the minute. The embedding licence is public — "From $575 / month" on Pro and Enterprise — and admins can see every alert and dashboard subscription in usage analytics; we found no public information on comments or annotations on dashboards, or on automating delivery channels through the API.
Access control, administration & portability
Cluvio
Admin, analyst and viewer roles with user groups, SAML 2.0 single sign-on with named identity providers, an audit log of logins, queries and object changes, per-dashboard usage tracking with change history, a documented REST API with an OpenAPI document, and JSON dashboard backups cover most of what I need before a 600-customer rollout. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, column-level security, development and production environments, a self-hosted edition or a row-level security feature by that name; per-user data scoping works instead through logged-in-user snippets and embedding context restrictions.
Metabase
Permissions run from database down to table, schema, row and column, backed by row-and-column security through saved SQL views, impersonation against database roles, SSO with required 2FA and IP allowlists on Pro, an audit log, download restrictions, and staging environments with content serialization between instances. The REST API is documented with OpenAPI and API keys, and the open-source edition under the AGPL licence self-hosts via Docker or JAR with an air-gapped Enterprise option; we found no public information on SAML or SCIM provisioning.
European sovereignty
Cluvio
The contracting entity is Cluvio GmbH in Berlin, analytical queries run directly on our own database with results only in a transient 24-hour cache, we choose the account region at signup with a guarantee the data stays there, and a GDPR data processing agreement can be signed in the account settings. Subprocessors are named — Recurly, Braintree, Google Analytics, Sendgrid, PagerDuty and others — but the privacy policy confirms processing outside the EEA including the US under standard contractual clauses, and the captured pages give locations only for some of them; the certifications shown are the hosting provider AWS's own.
Metabase
The contracting entity is Metabase, Inc. under California law, but cloud hosting offers a Frankfurt region with per-customer containers and the pages state that unless results caching is enabled none of the data returned by the database is stored on the vendor's side, while the documented self-hosted edition keeps everything on the customer's own servers — which, run on European infrastructure, becomes our own chain. Subprocessors are reviewed internally but not publicly listed, and we found no public information on a data processing agreement.
Pricing transparency
Cluvio
The pricing page publishes unusual detail: a free plan with three dashboards and 1,000 query executions a month, per-plan caps on datasources, dashboards, schedules, alert check rates, query duration and result rows, additional analysts at €99/$109 per month on Pro and €199/$219 on Business, unlimited free viewers, a one-month default term and VAT treatment including EU reverse charge. Interactive embedding sits on the Business plan with viewers free, which is exactly the cost shape I could build into our product price. The base subscription prices of the paid plans were not among the captured facts, so I could not compute a full annual figure from what I read.
Metabase
I can put a number on the embedding licence before signing: Pro is "$575 / month" with "$12 per user / month" after the first ten included, embedding "From $575 / month", storage "starts at $2 for 1M rows" with "1M stored rows are always free", transforms at "$0.01" and advanced at "$0.02" per run, AI at "$3.75 per 1m tokens" with a million included, "Yearly Save 10%", and everyone who signs in — including via SSO — is billed as a user, so the cost of six hundred customer viewers is computable. "Prices exclude any applicable taxes"; Enterprise "Price starts at $20,000 / year" without itemisation, and we found no public information on minimum term or the air-gap fee.
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.