Metabase vs. Domo
Which is right for my team?

Metabase is the easy-to-use business intelligence tool with a friendly UX that lets everyone in your team work with data.

Trusted by over 60,000 companies

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What's the difference between Metabase and Domo?

TL;DR - Domo is an all-in-one tool that combines data warehousing, transformation, visualization. Cool if you need that kind of thing. And you’ve got a lot of money to put into it. Metabase is focused on BI, with an emphasis on letting everyone - even less data-savvy or technical folks - query and visualize data, with or without SQL. It’s open source, lightweight, and can be set up in 5 minutes.

What makes Metabase a good choice compared to Domo?

  • Easy for everyone to use. Intuitive tools like interactive dashboards with quick drill-through analyses, the query builder to write questions without SQL, and one-click-to-create charts.
  • Open source and affordable. Transparent pricing for startups through to advanced functionality and support for Enterprise. Secure and scalable, with no limits on the size of your dataset.
  • Super fast to set up. Even without technical skills, an account rep, or a shaman to guide you.
  • Best of BI. Works with your favorite data tools, from storage, to ETL, to semantic layering. We give you options, while we focus on delivering performant, secure, usable analytics features.
  • Interactive, customer-facing analytics in days, not sprints. Customizable embedded analytics that lets your customers explore their data with as much - or as little - flexibility as you want.
  • Help from our world-class Success team. Fast, direct help from technical experts, no intermediate support agents. Customers love them.
  • Private and secure. We never look at or copy your data. And we prioritize privacy and security features to secure data access in your org, like SSO and fine-grained permissions.

When might Domo be a better fit than Metabase?*

  • You’re an enterprise-level company working with large, complex data sets from many different sources, with a team to run your BI program and ad hoc reports for the team.
  • You’re not on a tight budget, and consumption-based, annual billing works for you.
  • You need all-in-one advanced data integration for data warehousing, transformation and dataflows for ETL processes.
  • You need to plug in directly from a diverse range of data sources, from Instagram to Google Fit to Workday.
  • You only want some people querying your data.
  • You’ve got time to go through their sales cycle.
  • You don’t have specific deployment requirements (Domo is cloud-hosted).

*For the record... Metabase also supports a number of happy enterprise-level customers for all their BI needs.
(We’re trying to present a somewhat balanced view here, but c’mon, it’s still our website 😏)

“It's the first time in my years working in data that I saw non-technical business users create their own dashboards and analytics in our BI platform, all made possible because of Metabase’s user friendly and intuitive data exploration and dashboarding capabilities.”

Photo of Dobo Radichkov

Dobo Radichkov

Chief Data Officer, Holland & Barrett

Frequently asked questions

When is Metabase a better choice than Domo?

Metabase is best suited for businesses that need a straightforward way for everyone in the team to self-serve analytics without having to rely too heavily on your data team. It's BI that your team will actually enjoy using, at the right price for your scale.

When is Domo a better choice than Metabase?

Credit where it’s due - Domo can be a good fit for larger enterprises or orgs with more extensive data analysis needs, deep pockets, and a lower need for everyone in the org to be able to jump in and run their own reports. It’s got a lot of bells and whistles - and depending on the maturity of your org, your use case and needs, it may be more than you need.

Who uses Metabase over Domo?

Metabase is trusted by over 60,000 companies with their analytics, from startups who need their first business intelligence tool through to Enterprises. Metabase open source is the go-to choice for founders and solo-developers to let their teams get answers from data on their own so they’re not running the same reports once a month. Metabase Pro and Enterprise is generally chosen by CTOs, CPOs, Heads of Data who have been there, done that with every other BI tool on the market and need a way to make self-service analytics actually happen.

What use cases do Metabase and Domo cover?

Both Metabase and Domo cater to internal analytics, as well as interactive embedded analytics for customers.

Metabase is ideal for quick, intuitive data exploration that lets people in your company click around in interactive dashboard and visualizations to learn from data, or create queries with or without SQL.

Domo may be better suited for complex data analysis and putting detailed visualizations in front of customers.

What’s the difference in pricing between Metabase and Domo?

Metabase is open source with affordable plans available for additional security and governance features, cloud deployment, and fast, unlimited technical help from engineers.

Domo's pricing is generally higher with user and consumption-based billing and various pricing tiers depending on the use case.

Do you need to know SQL to use Metabase and Domo?

Metabase and Domo both let data analysts work in SQL; and less technically savvy people ask questions without SQL. Metabase's intuitive Query Builder lets non-technical or data savvy people put together analyses with clicks - no SQL necessary. Analysts and data people who prefer to write SQL can fill their boots in the SQL editor.

How do Metabase and Domo compare in terms of visualization capabilities?

Metabase and Domo give people a way to visualize their data and make sense of the numbers. But Metabase is so much more than just a visualization tool. For people who feel like they’re seeing double when staring at columns, it’s an intuitive way to filter and summarize to uncover trends and get insights to make data-driven decisions.

Ok, give it to me straight though - what’s the best Business Intelligence tool?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It will generally depend on your use case, how much you want people to be able to learn from data and run reports on their own without depending on your data team; your preferred data stack, how fast you need to get up and running, your budget, and more.

Again, there’s no “right” answer, but just sayin’ - Metabase will let everyone on your team work with data, integrates with your preferred data tools, gets up and running in 5 minutes flat, and suits all budgets (and you can try it for free).

Have more questions? We’d be happy to help.
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