Three paths to embed Metabase.
None of them feel free.

Metabase Open Source Edition is free to download under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL). For embedding in your product, that creates three paths.

First, abide by AGPL — which requires sharing your modifications to Metabase with end users when you serve them over a network. Second, abide by Metabase's separate Embedding License — which requires keeping the "Powered by Metabase" branding visible on embedded artifacts. Third, purchase a commercial license (Pro or Enterprise) to remove the badge and lift AGPL restrictions. None of those paths is "free" in the way most ISVs need for production embedded analytics. Yurbi is commercially licensed for embedded use across all tiers from $10,000/year — one license, no badge, no AGPL review.

Metabase Pro is the minimum commercial tier that includes interactive embedding, white-label branding (badge removed), SAML/JWT single sign-on, row-level and column-level security, and multi-tenant features. Pro starts at $575/month including 10 users and adds $12/user/month above that. On annual billing it is $6,210/year base plus $130/user/year.

For an ISV using sign-in (modular or full-app) embedding, where each customer viewer is billed as a user, costs scale per seat. At 250 customer end-users that's roughly $37,000–$41,000/year. At 1,000 end-users it reaches roughly $135,000–$149,000/year. Guest embeds (formerly static embedding) don't count as users and are badge-free on Pro, but they are view-only with no per-user self-service. Enterprise has a $20,000/year minimum; quotes vary.

The GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL) is a copyleft license. The key clause for embedded SaaS is the "network use" provision: if you modify the AGPL-licensed software and serve it to users over a network, you must make those modifications available under the AGPL.

For ISVs that customize Metabase — adjusting the UI, integrating SSO, modifying the embedding logic, branding adjustments — those modifications must be released as AGPL source if you serve them to your end users without a commercial license. Most SaaS ISVs cannot operate under AGPL because their product code is proprietary. The practical implication is that AGPL is not a viable production embedded path for typical ISVs without a commercial Metabase license on top.

None of this is hidden — Metabase publishes its license terms openly. The point for evaluation is to factor the legal review and constraint into the timeline and cost, rather than treat "open source" as automatically free.

Metabase's separate Embedding License lets you embed Metabase in your application free of AGPL obligations — but it requires keeping the "Powered by Metabase" branding visible on every embedded dashboard and question.

For ISVs whose embedded analytics is a customer-facing feature of their product, a third-party vendor brand inside the customer experience is usually unacceptable. Customers expect a unified, white-labeled experience. The badge tells your customer that the analytics they're using isn't actually your product. Removing the badge requires either AGPL compliance (rarely viable for proprietary SaaS) or a commercial Metabase license (Pro or Enterprise). Yurbi is white-label by default in every tier — no badge, no "Powered by" footer, no legal review.

Metabase has long included row-level and column-level security (data sandboxing) in Pro and Enterprise, added database routing per tenant in v55 (June 2025), and introduced a dedicated Tenants feature in v58 (January 2026).

These are real capabilities, but multi-tenant features remain gated to Pro and Enterprise (not Open Source or Starter), and the Tenants feature is newer. Yurbi has been built around multi-tenant ISV use since 2009 — platform-level tenant isolation, dynamic per-tenant data source routing, and unlimited per-tenant white-label branding are included in every plan from $10,000/year. The architecture difference shows up most clearly when a customer requires their own database connection per tenant: Metabase's database routing is configurable; Yurbi's dynamic data source routing is the default pattern.

Metabase has a more modern UI, a large open-source community, faster cadence on new features, Modular Embedding (including a React SDK) for component-level integration, and Metabot for natural-language queries (free with your own AI key on any plan).

Yurbi has no JS SDK — embedding is iframe and API only. Yurbi has no AI or natural-language features yet (on roadmap, deliberately built on the semantic layer for safe multi-tenant query generation). SSO is session-token based via the DoLogin API (plus Windows/AD and header-based SSO); native SAML/OIDC is in development. Sign-in includes two-factor (app, email, or text), Cisco Duo, breached-password screening, and lockout. Yurbi's UI is functional but less modern than Metabase's recent design. If those gaps are blockers for your use case, Metabase is the better fit and we will tell you that in a demo.

Both products can have a working embedded dashboard inside days. The difference is what happens around the dashboard.

With Metabase, the legal review of AGPL versus the Embedding License versus a commercial license has to happen before you can ship — and that review is often the longest item in the timeline. The pricing modeling exercise (Pro at your customer end-user count, or Enterprise quote, or AGPL compliance plan) also has to happen. With Yurbi, the trial is the same product as production, the embedding pattern is the same, the pricing is published, and there is no badge or AGPL review to navigate. Time to evaluate, not time to build the dashboard, is usually the gap.