Power BI, Looker Studio or Metabase: which one should you choose?

Power BI, Looker Studio and Metabase all build dashboards. Yet they don’t suit the same companies. The right choice depends less on features than on three questions: which tools do you already use, how many people will read the dashboards, and where is your data.

The prices below come from the vendors’ official pages, accessed on October 2, 2026 and listed at the end of this article.

At a glance

Criterion	Power BI	Looker Studio (Data Studio)	Metabase
Vendor	Microsoft	Google	Metabase (open source)
Best for	Companies on Microsoft 365	Companies on Google Workspace	Teams with a database who want control
To get started	Power BI Desktop, free	Free	Open-source edition, free, self-hosted
To share	Power BI Pro: €12.10 excl. VAT per user per month	Free; Pro edition at $9 per user per project per month	Cloud Starter: $100 per month, 5 users included

Power BI: the natural choice on Microsoft 365

Power BI is Microsoft’s tool. It works well with Excel, SharePoint and Teams, and its calculation language supports advanced data models.

What it costs. Power BI Desktop, used to build reports, is free. To share them with your team, Microsoft lists Power BI Pro at €12.10 excl. VAT per user per month, billed annually, and Premium Per User at €20.80 excl. VAT. According to Microsoft, viewing without an individual licence is only possible with large capacities (P1, F64 and above), out of reach for most small businesses: plan one Pro licence per reader.

Its limits. Power BI Desktop only runs on Windows. And the cost grows with the number of readers.

Looker Studio: free, simple, very Google

Google renamed Looker Studio to Data Studio in April 2026; many people still search for it under its former name. It’s an online tool, with nothing to install.

What it costs. Google states that the tool is free for report creators and viewers. A Pro edition, with extra admin features, is listed at $9 per user per project per month.

Its limits. It’s at ease with Google Sheets, Google Analytics or BigQuery. Other sources often require third-party connectors, some of them paid. Complex calculations are less comfortable than in Power BI.

Metabase: open source, if your data lives in a database

Metabase is an open-source tool. It’s designed to query a database: standalone spreadsheets have to be loaded into one first.

What it costs. The open-source edition is free, with unlimited users, but you host it yourself. As a hosted service, Metabase lists Starter at $100 per month with 5 users included (then $6 per user), and Pro at $575 per month with 10 users included (then $12), excluding taxes.

Its limits. Self-hosting requires a server and some maintenance. And without a clean database, there isn’t much to connect.

A sample calculation for ten readers

For a company where ten people read the dashboards, based on public prices:

Power BI Pro: 10 × €12.10 excl. VAT, or €121 excl. VAT per month;
Looker Studio, free edition: €0;
Metabase Starter: $100 for 5 users, plus 5 × $6, or $130 per month.

This only counts licences. It says nothing about build time or maintenance, which often weigh more (see our article on what a dashboard costs).

How to choose, in three questions

Which tools do you already use? Microsoft 365: look at Power BI first. Google Workspace: Looker Studio.
How many readers? With many occasional readers, Power BI’s per-user cost adds up; Looker Studio or Metabase fare better.
Where is your data? In a database you control: Metabase becomes attractive. In Excel files: Power BI or Looker Studio.

There’s no bad choice among these three tools, only better or worse fits. A good dashboard comes first from well-defined metrics and reliable sources.