Metabase Pricing 2025: Why SaaS Teams Switch Before Their First Renewal

Choosing an embedded analytics platform shouldn’t feel like writing an open-ended cheque. Yet many teams discover that Metabase’s friendly “$500 per month” headline morphs into five- and six-figure invoices once the product is live in customers’ hands. This guide unpacks how the seat-based pricing model, feature paywalls, and self-hosting overheads add up—then shows why Databrain’s flat subscription avoids those surprises.

‍What Is Metabase Embedded Analytics?

Metabase began life as an open-source BI tool and later bolted on customer-facing capabilities—interactive embedding, a React SDK, and white-label options. Those features work, but most of them unlock only after upgrading to Pro or Enterprise tiers, and every interactive viewer must authenticate against Metabase.

Metabase’s Pricing Structure at a Glance

Public list pricing, 1 July 2025‍

‍A Deep Dive into Metabase’s Embedded-Analytics Pricing Challenges

1. Every interactive viewer is a paid seat

Interactive embedding is available only on Pro and Enterprise, and Metabase explicitly states that it “integrates with your permissions and SSO”—meaning viewers must sign in and count as users for billing.

One enterprise admin breaks down the math:

2. Seat tax snowballs as you scale

With Pro you get 10 users; each extra viewer costs $10/month. A SaaS app with 1 000 monthly active customers would pay roughly $10 400 per month—>$124 k annually—before hosting or support. (Math: $500 + 990 × $10.)

3. “Free” self-hosting isn’t free

The OSS edition avoids licence fees but still needs HA servers, a load balancer, a managed database, email/SMS gateways, backups, and 24×7 DevOps cover—as Metabase’s own docs outline—easily $100-130 per month in cloud bills, plus staff time. 

4. Critical features hide behind paywalls

Row-level security, SSO/SCIM, usage analytics, and white-labeling unlock only at Pro or Enterprise.

Reddit reality check: Power users feel the pinch:

Bottom line: You pay the first $500/month just to reach parity with what Databrain bundles from day 1.

5. Mandatory branding on lower tiers

Static embeds on OSS & Starter carry a mandatory “Powered by Metabase” badge. Removing it requires the $500/month Pro tier.

Bottom line: White-label is table stakes for customer-facing analytics; why pay a premium just to erase somebody else’s logo?

6. Enterprise negotiation slows you down (and still charges per seat)

Need >1 000 viewers, air-gapped hosting, or a named CSM? Prepare for custom quotes and a procurement slog.

Bottom line: The $10-per-seat meter keeps running even after you cut a five-figure Enterprise check.

‍Real-world case study — Freightify swaps Metabase for Databrain and saves $200K

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What went wrong with Metabase

• Lag when processing millions of rows
  
  
• Limited customisation for customer-branded dashboards
  
  
• Mounting seat bills as their logistics SaaS scaled
  
  

Why Databrain fixed it

• Unlimited viewers — no seat math
  
  
• Low-code dashboard builder for PMs with zero SQL
  
  
• Scales to billions of rows with tenant-aware caching
  
  

Outcome

Freightify eliminated per-viewer fees, shipped a white-label analytics module in a week, and redirected $200 k of projected Metabase spend to product growth. 

Why Databrain Is the Smarter Choice for Embedded Analytics

✅ Transparent, flat pricing

One published subscription (from $999 to $2 499 per month) covers unlimited viewers, dashboards, and workspaces—no hidden seat multipliers.

✅ SDK-first, 72-hour deployments

Drop-in React/JS components, native row-level security, and tenant-aware caching get you to production in days, not sprints.

✅ Purpose-built for customer-facing UX

Mobile-responsive layouts, theming via CSS variables, and Ext JS-like event hooks let you ship analytics that feel native to your app—without hacking around an internal-BI UI.

Getting Started with Databrain — Three Simple Steps

1. Connect your data: Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, and more.
   
   
2. Brand your dashboards: Drag-and-drop layouts, custom colour tokens, logo swap.
   
   
3. Embed & ship: Copy the generated SDK snippet into your app, push to prod.
   
   

Documentation, live sandbox, and solution architects are included for every customer—from POC to scale.

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The Final Verdict on Metabase Embedded Analytics

Bottom line: Metabase’s per-viewer model punishes growth, gates essential features, and shifts infra burden onto your team. Databrain offers a single, predictable subscription that scales with your business—not your user count.

Ready for no-surprise embedded analytics?

Embed unlimited, fully branded dashboards with Databrain in days. Book a 30-minute demo and see why scaling SaaS teams are making the switch.