Comparison

Starburst vs Metabase

Starburst and Metabase both land on Depends.

Starburst

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy if you are a large organization with many data sources and engineers to run federation.

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy it if someone on your team can host it, patch it fast, and write SQL . the free open-source core is genuinely capable BI.

Starburst versus Metabase
Compare	Starburst	Metabase
Verdict	Depends	Depends
Best for	Enterprises querying many data sources	Startups wanting free BI on existing databases
Who it's not for	Small teams doing simple analytics	Teams with nobody to own hosting and patching
Privacy	Enterprise security and governance features marketed; 2021 Log4Shell advisory and 2024 Dell-appliance CVE patched; no breaches found in sources reviewed.^⁸	Active 2026 vulnerability stream . four critical CVEs including an unauthenticated SQL injection; prompt patching is non-optional.¹⁰
Support quality	No usable evidence in sources reviewed	No support-quality evidence in sources
Public sentiment	Users praise Starburst Galaxy's federated-query capabilities but frequently flag usage-based pricing as steep for smaller teams.^²	Users like the query builder and SQL access; recurring gripes are exports, dashboard customization, and slow queries on big datasets.
Biggest gotcha	Galaxy is usage-based; smaller teams report costs feel steep^³	Self-hosting means you own patching; 2026 fixes spanned 55.13, 56.3, 57.1 and later