Metabase vs Google Data Studio (Looker Studio) for BigQuery and Cloud SQL
Blog post from Metabase
Google Data Studio, renamed from Looker Studio in April 2026, and Metabase are business-intelligence tools that can work with BigQuery and Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL but differ in pricing, hosting, governance, and self-service analysis. Data Studio is a Google-hosted reporting product that is free for creators and viewers, with a $9-per-user monthly Pro tier offering enhanced collaboration, delivery, AI, and support, while Metabase offers a free self-hosted open-source edition, managed Cloud plans beginning at $100 monthly, and higher-tier governance features. Both can generate BigQuery charges, so the text emphasizes maximum-bytes-billed limits, query quotas, and caching, with each platform providing cache controls. Metabase can be deployed on Cloud Run or Compute Engine with Cloud SQL as its application database, though Cloud Run requires continuously allocated CPU and a running instance for background tasks, whereas Metabase Cloud handles infrastructure management. Data Studio supports Google-centric reporting, credential-based BigQuery access, Google account sharing, and scheduled PDF delivery, while Metabase focuses more on collaborative ad hoc exploration, query building, SQL analysis, Slack subscriptions, direct PostgreSQL querying, and guest embeds with locked parameters. Data Studio supports viewer-email filtering and BigQuery-native row security, whereas Metabase’s row and column security requires Pro or Enterprise plans and applies rules through Metabase’s service-account connection. Overall, Data Studio is positioned as a simple no-cost option for sharing dashboards across Google data sources, while Metabase is better suited to teams seeking self-service analytics, flexible hosting, frequent notifications, or embedded customer-facing analytics.
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