DashboardFox vs Metabase
Metabase is developer-friendly and has a solid open-source community — but the jump from Starter to Pro is $575/month, and that's where white-label, row-level security, and SSO live. Here's how we compare.
Metabase — where it falls short
$575
Pro cliff
Starter → Pro jump per month
$0
White-label
Not on Starter at any price
Per-user
Billing model
Active or not, every seat counts
DIY
Open-source
You host, patch, and maintain
The short answer
Metabase is a solid tool with a great developer community. If you have DevOps resources to self-host the open-source version, your users are primarily developers, you don't need white-label or row-level security, or you can comfortably budget $575/month for Pro — it's a good choice. The notebook-style editor, visual query builder, and new Metabot AI assistant are genuinely well-designed.
But if you hit the Pro cliff — needing white-label, RLS, or interactive embedding and not wanting to jump from $100 to $575/month — DashboardFox includes all of that starting at $99/month. No badge on your embeds, no security upgrade tax, no DevOps overhead, no AI add-on fees for basic report delivery.
Prefer no subscriptions? On-premise from $4,995 one-time →
TL;DR — The key differences
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White-label at $99, not $575 Remove branding, add your custom domain, use your logo — all included in our Starter plan. Metabase requires Pro ($575/month) for any of that. Even Guest Embeds on their Starter plan show a "Powered by Metabase" badge.
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Row-level security included — not locked behind Pro Metabase calls it "Data Sandboxing" and locks it behind Pro ($575/month). We include Data Tags and dynamic RLS in every plan — no tier upgrade required.
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MAU tiers — pay for active users, not headcount Metabase charges $6–$12/user for every account whether active or not. We use MAU tiers — pick a tier, add capacity in blocks of 10, and only size for typical usage not total headcount.
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SSO on every plan, without the $575 cliff Metabase gates SAML, JWT, OIDC and SCIM behind Pro. We include session-token SSO and two-factor sign-in (app, email or text) on every plan — no tier upgrade required. Native SAML/OIDC is in development; if you need SAML or SCIM today, that's a Metabase Pro strength.
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No DevOps required, no AI add-on fees Metabase's open-source option needs your team to host and maintain it. Our cloud is fully managed, and scheduled reports to people without a login are included in every plan.
Which one is right for you?
We're not going to pretend we're better in every scenario.
Choose DashboardFox if:
- You need white-label and row-level security without paying $575/month
- You're embedding analytics for clients and need multi-tenant data separation
- You don't have a DevOps team to self-host and maintain open-source software
- Your team is a mix of technical and business users
- You want predictable MAU pricing as your user count grows
Choose Metabase if:
- You have DevOps capacity and want a free, self-hosted open-source option
- Your team is mostly developers who prefer Metabase's notebook-style SQL interface
- You need a quick proof-of-concept with zero budget
- You want AI-powered natural language queries today via Metabot
- You don't need white-label, RLS, or SAML SSO (or can budget $575/month for Pro)
Not sure we're the right fit? Before you decide, here's where we fall short for some teams. See the full breakdown →
- No developer-level embedding — Metabase's modular embedding and React SDK give developers full component-level control. We don't have that level of embed customization.
- No associative cross-filtering — clicking a chart drills to a detail report, it doesn't cross-filter the page.
- Not built for large raw datasets — live queries pull to memory; unfiltered dumps of millions of rows hit limits and require the Scale tier.
The $575/month cliff
You need white-label and row-level security for 90 users. Here's what that costs.
DashboardFox
Growth Plan
$249
/month — ~30 active out of 90 total users
- ✓ White-label and custom domain included
- ✓ Row-level security included
- ✓ Only pay for ~30 monthly active users
Metabase Pro
Per-user pricing
$1,535
/month — $575 base + 80 extra users × $12
- ✗ Must be on Pro ($575/mo) for white-label
- ✗ Must be on Pro ($575/mo) for row-level security
- ✗ Every user counts, active or not
The gap widens with scale: Metabase Starter ($100/mo) would be cheaper — but it doesn't include white-label, RLS, or SAML/JWT SSO. The moment you need any of those, you jump to $575/month before adding a single extra user. And if you need procurement support or dedicated SLAs, Enterprise starts at $20,000/year.
$575 Pro base + 80 extra users × $12. Metabase Starter ($100/mo, 5 users included) adds $6/user beyond that — 90 users on Starter would be about $610/mo, but still without white-label or RLS. The moment you need either feature, you jump straight to Pro at $575 before adding a single extra user.
Enter your user count and features needed → see your savings
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Metabase pricing based on publicly available information as of October 2026. Metabase may change pricing, tiers, or feature availability at any time. We recommend verifying current pricing at metabase.com/pricing.
Feature comparison
Focused on where the two tools actually differ
| Feature | DashboardFox | Metabase |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing & Licensing | ||
| Pricing model | Monthly active users | Base fee + per-user (every account counts) |
| Entry price (cloud) | $99/month | $100/month (5 users included) |
| Pro features price | Included in all plans | $575/month (10 users included) |
| Free/open-source option | ✗ | ✓ Self-hosted OSS |
| Self-hosted (commercial) | ✓ $4,995 one-time | ✓ Pro/Enterprise (same cloud pricing) |
| Billing flexibility | Monthly, no commitment | Monthly or annual (10% discount) |
| Branding & Embedding | ||
| White-label / remove branding | ✓ All plans ($99+) | Pro only ($575/mo+) |
| Custom domain | ✓ All plans ($99+) | Pro only ($575/mo+) |
| "Powered by" badge | Never shown | Shown on OSS/Starter Guest Embeds |
| Guest embedding (view-only) | ✓ All plans | ✓ All plans (with badge on Starter) |
| Interactive embedding (drill-through, SSO) | ✓ All plans - API Session Token | Pro only for SAML/JWT/SCIM ($575/mo+) |
| Multi-tenant management | ✓ All plans — Data Tags | ✓ Tenants feature (Pro/Enterprise, added v58) |
| Security & Authentication | ||
| Row-level security | ✓ All plans | Pro only ("Data Sandboxing", $575/mo+) |
| Google SSO / LDAP | ✓ All plans | ✓ All plans (including OSS) |
| SAML / JWT / SCIM | Session-token SSO and 2FA (app, email, text) on all plans · Duo and header-based SSO on Scale+ · native SAML/OIDC in development | Pro only ($575/mo+) |
| Dedicated customer database | ✓ All plans | ✗ Shared infrastructure (single-tenant on Enterprise) |
| AI & Automation | ||
| AI assistant | — | ✓ Metabot (bring your own AI key, or Metabase's metered AI service) |
| Scheduled reports | ✓ All plans | ✓ All plans (email/Slack) |
| Scheduled reports to non-users | ✓ PDF/Excel/image via email, no login | ✓ Email subscriptions to any address (CSV, XLSX, PDF) |
| Where Metabase leads | ||
| Open-source / free tier | — | ✓ Full OSS version |
| Notebook-style SQL editor | — Standard SQL editor | ✓ |
| Natural language queries | — | ✓ Metabot AI |
| Community & plugins | — Growing | ✓ Large open-source community |
| No-code question builder | — Semantic layer approach | ✓ Visual query builder |
Outgrowing Metabase? We'll help you move.
We'll rebuild your top dashboards so you're not starting from scratch — talk to the people who built it.
Your BI vendor changed. We didn't.
Most teams find us after their reporting vendor changed on them: a big price hike, an acquisition, support that stopped answering, a roadmap that stalled. We've helped teams move off Izenda, Crystal Reports, SSRS, Logi and others — and we've been competing with billion-dollar BI vendors since 1999.
- Built for the long haul. Bootstrapped and independent, with no investors pushing for an exit. Many customers have been with us for over 10 years.
- Pricing that doesn't ambush you. Published, flat pricing. No per-seat creep, no surprise renewal hikes, no paywalled security features.
- You talk to the people who built it. No tier-one queue, no outsourced support. The engineers who wrote the code answer.
- Upgrades keep your reports working. We ship weekly, and every report you've built carries forward.
Free training included. 40+ short video lessons in the DashboardFox Academy, from connecting your first database to row-level security and white-label. No paid onboarding package required.Browse the Academy →
Common questions
You can — but "free" has real costs. You need a server to run it, someone to maintain and update it, and you handle your own backups and security patches. You also don't get white-label, row-level security (Data Sandboxing), SAML/JWT SSO, or interactive embedding. Basic Google SSO and LDAP work, but enterprise auth doesn't. (Metabot AI does work self-hosted if you bring your own AI provider key.) If you have DevOps capacity and don't need those features, open-source Metabase is a legitimate option. If you don't, the hidden costs add up fast.
Starter ($100/mo, 5 users included): Managed cloud hosting, basic embedding (Guest Embeds with "Powered by Metabase" badge), email support with 3-day SLA, Google SSO/LDAP. No white-label, no RLS, no SAML/JWT, no interactive embedding. Pro ($575/mo, 10 users included): Adds white-label, Data Sandboxing (RLS), SAML/JWT/SCIM, interactive embedding via Modular SDK, Tenants for multi-tenant isolation, serialization, usage analytics. Cloud or self-hosted. Enterprise (starts at $20k/year): Everything in Pro plus dedicated success engineer, 1-day SLA, procurement support, optional air-gapped or single-tenant hosting. DashboardFox includes white-label, RLS, session-token SSO, and interactive embedding in every plan from $99/month.
DashboardFox connects to the same databases Metabase uses. You're not migrating data — you're building new dashboards on the same sources. Most teams are up and running in a day or two. If you have existing Metabase questions and dashboards, you'll rebuild them (there's no import), but connecting to your data is immediate.
We take a different approach. Instead of a visual query builder, DashboardFox uses a semantic layer — you define data sources, formulas, and relationships once, then business users build reports from those definitions without writing SQL. It's less "click to build a query" and more "build from pre-defined building blocks." Technical users can also write SQL directly.
Metabase Starter supports Guest Embeds — view-only charts and dashboards with a "Powered by Metabase" badge. Users can't drill through data or explore interactively. Interactive embedding via the Modular SDK, white-label theming, and SAML/JWT SSO all require Pro ($575/month). If you're embedding dashboards for clients, the badge and lack of interactivity usually aren't acceptable. DashboardFox includes interactive embedding with full white-label in every plan.
Every plan, including Starter, includes two-factor sign-in (authenticator app, email code, or text message), screening against known-breached passwords, account lockout after repeated failures, and an audit trail of every sign-in and admin action. Session-token SSO lets users sign in from your own app. Scale and above add Duo, text messages through your own SMS provider, and header-based SSO. Native SAML/OIDC is in development. We don't hold a SOC 2 report — we're upfront about that — but we routinely pass customers' own security assessments, and a BAA is available on any plan with the Compliance Tier. See how we protect your data →
Not yet — and we're deliberate about that. We watched the first wave of "AI BI" produce hallucinated column names and misread data models. We're getting our core semantic layer right first. AI is coming soon: query building in plain language, visualization suggestions, and analysis on your outputs. Model-agnostic — we're not locking into one provider. We'll ship it when it actually works, not when it makes a good headline.
Metabot is Metabase's AI assistant — it lets users ask questions in natural language, generate SQL, and get chart summaries. It's a genuine strength. You can run it with your own AI provider key on any plan, or use Metabase's managed AI service, which is billed by tokens after a free allowance. Embedded experiences (including Metabot) require Pro or Enterprise. DashboardFox doesn't offer AI or natural language queries yet (they're coming soon), but we include scheduled reports, SQL access, and report delivery to non-users without add-on fees in every plan.
Beyond the sticker price: Self-hosting the OSS edition means servers (typically $100+/mo in cloud bills), DevOps time for maintenance, backups, and upgrades. Per-user scaling — every account counts whether active or not, and interactive embed viewers need their own Metabase account ($12/user/mo on Pro). Metabot AI on the managed service is metered by tokens after the free allowance. Enterprise starts at $20k/year just for procurement support and faster SLAs. And every plan bills annually for the 10% discount — no true month-to-month flexibility at the discounted rate.
We source all Metabase pricing from their publicly available pricing page and documentation, last verified in October 2026. Metabase may change pricing, tiers, or feature availability at any time — we recommend verifying at metabase.com/pricing.
