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Metabase vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Metabase
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
23rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (5th), Reporting (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Metabase is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Ibrahim Izz El-Deen - PeerSpot reviewer
Modern analytics tool enhances user interactions with neat visualizations for improved decision-making
One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective. Data scalability, especially if the data grows, requires manual infrastructure management, which could be improved. Increased customization and visualization options in the open-source edition would be beneficial. Additionally, it might be helpful if more complex queries and stored procedures were supported.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels in handling unstructured data, helping organizations navigate through different storage systems
Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Metabase's key advantage is its modern approach to business intelligence."
"I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten."
"It is easy for a new user to learn the tool."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used to query data into Metabase. I think it is very useful and handy for a novice."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
 

Cons

"The solution could provide more customization."
"The tool must be made more user-friendly."
"One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective."
"I think there is a need to add a few more advanced visuals in the tool. There are a standard set of visuals in the tool which are available."
"The repository should be improved."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not say it is a cheap tool, but it's viable."
"Using the open-source edition of Metabase on AWS EC2 cost us around $29 per month for the EC2 instance, which was affordable."
"The product is open-sourced."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Metabase?
Using the open-source edition of Metabase on AWS EC2 cost us around $29 per month for the EC2 instance, which was affordable.
What needs improvement with Metabase?
One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective. Data scalability, especially if the data grows,...
What is your primary use case for Metabase?
I used Metabase for business intelligence and analytics in my organization. We connected Metabase to AWS Athena, allowing us to query and visualize data stored in S3 buckets.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Metabase vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.