Looker Studio vs Metabase: Complete Comparison (2026)
Choosing between Looker Studio and Metabase is a common decision for analytics & bi buyers in 2026. Both Looker Studio and Metabase are established players, founded in 2016 and 2014 respectively. Looker Studio serves 10M+ users while Metabase has 100K+ users globally. Looker Studio differentiates with drag-and-drop dashboards and data connectors, while Metabase leads with no-code queries and dashboards. In this head-to-head comparison, Metabase earns a higher hiltonsoftware.co score of 90/100 — but the right choice depends on your specific needs, budget, and team size.
Quick Comparison
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Pros & Cons at a Glance
After comparing Looker Studio and Metabase across features, pricing, and user satisfaction, Metabase takes the lead with a score of 90/100 versus Looker Studio's 86/100. Metabase's key advantages include "free and open source self-hosted" and "very easy for non-technical users". That said, Looker Studio has its own strengths — particularly "completely free" — making it a viable alternative for specific use cases.
Both Looker Studio and Metabase offer free plans, lowering the barrier to entry. Looker Studio's paid plans start at Free while Metabase begins at $500/mo (cloud). Evaluate which paid features — Sharing, Templates (Looker Studio) vs Self-hosted option, Embedding (Metabase) — justify upgrading for your team.
Bottom line: Choose Looker Studio if you need marketers and analysts wanting free dashboard reporting on google data. Go with Metabase if your priority is startups and teams wanting free, easy bi without a data engineering team. Both are strong analytics & bi tools — we recommend trying the free plan of each before committing.
Marketers and analysts wanting free dashboard reporting on Google data.
Startups and teams wanting free, easy BI without a data engineering team.