Metabase vs Amplitude
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Metabase and Amplitude.
🏆
Verdict: Metabase wins
Metabase scores 4.3/5, edging out Amplitude at 4.2/5. Small and mid-size teams wanting self-hostable, easy-to-use BI where AI answers are inspectable and governed by their own metric definitions.
Metabase Open-source BI with AI query assistance | Amplitude Product analytics platform that tracks user behavior and predicts outcomes | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.3 (1 review) | 4.2 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best For | Small and mid-size teams wanting self-hostable, easy-to-use BI where AI answers are inspectable and governed by their own metric definitions. | Product and growth teams who will use deep cohort, funnel and retention analysis daily and can get a written per-event rate before scaling past the free tier. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | open sourcefree tierteam features | free tierapi accessteam features |
| Visit Metabase → | Visit Amplitude → |
Metabase
Pros
- + Semantic-layer-grounded AI: in my testing, questions resolved correctly almost every time where metrics were defined, and the docs openly state the failure mode elsewhere
- + Generated SQL is inspectable before execution and every chart drills through to its query — fixing one wrong definition corrected the answer for everyone
- + Open Source edition is free with unlimited users, questions and dashboards, self-hostable
- + Metabot answered a data question and posted the chart in Slack without a context switch in my test
- + Same price for cloud and self-hosted Pro ($575/month including 10 users), with an MCP server for governed external AI access
Cons
- - Not a machine-learning product — no forecasting, anomaly detection or predictive modelling
- - AI governance controls (token limits, usage analytics, system prompts) sit on Pro at $575/month, a large jump from free
- - Embedded viewer accounts count as billable users on paid tiers
- - Metabot works best in English and only inspects the first 100 tables when no table is specified
- - Complex chart layouts still require SQL or the API
Amplitude
Pros
- + The free tier carried a complete analysis workflow for me — funnel, retention, cohorts, dashboards and session replay — at 2M events/month with unlimited teammates
- + Analysis depth is the best in the category: chaining a funnel into a cohort into retention and then replaying the drop-off sessions worked end to end without exporting
- + Conversion drivers surfaced an activation correlate I would not have guessed from the funnel alone
- + Overage on Plus bills at 1.0x your per-event fee rather than a penalty rate, and experiment exposure events are free — two terms that favor the buyer
- + Agent Analytics (trace analysis, LLM evaluators, topic clustering) is aimed at teams shipping AI agents, which almost no other analytics vendor covers
Cons
- - No published per-event rate anywhere — Plus pricing lives only in an estimator widget, and Growth/Enterprise are quote-only
- - Session replay retention is one month on every plan; longer retention is an add-on, so quarter-over-quarter replay comparison is impossible by default
- - One active experiment on Free and Plus is a trial allowance; real experimentation needs Growth plus percentage-priced add-ons
- - Two vendor pages state the free ceiling differently (2M events vs 10K MTUs + 2M events), so actual limits must be checked in the billing panel
- - The interface has many paths to the same question; the non-analyst I onboarded needed training before self-serving
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Metabase or Amplitude?▼
Metabase scores higher at 4.3/5 vs 4.2/5 for Amplitude, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Metabase and Amplitude?▼
Metabase: Metabase is open-source business intelligence software with a semantic layer, so questions asked in natural language resolve against defined metrics and the underlying query stays inspectable. Amplitude: Amplitude is a product analytics platform that tracks user behaviour across a product, with AI assistance for analysis, experiments and feedback.
Is Metabase or Amplitude more affordable?▼
Metabase starts at €0/mo, Amplitude starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new AI tools, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.