Business intelligence
Self-hosted alternatives to Tableau, priced
2 open-source tools that can replace Tableau, each shown with what it would actually cost to run for a team of 10 people. Tableau on the Tableau Standard tier costs $150 a month at that size.
| Tool | Server only | With your time | vs Tableau | Operational weight | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metabase | $26.40 | $139 | -$50.40 | medium | source-available |
| Apache Superset | $46.80 | $272 | -$5,585 | hard | Apache-2.0 |
The final column is the 36-month difference: positive means self-hosting is cheaper.
Which one to pick
Metabase 49,210 stars
JVM application with an application database of its own. Concurrent query load, not seat count, is what forces an upgrade here.
At 10 people it needs 2.7 GB of memory and 10.5 GB of disk, which fits the Starter 4 GB at VPSServer for $22.00 a month. Setting it up is roughly 6 hours of work, then 1.5 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full Tableau versus Metabase breakdown · Metabase at every team size
Apache Superset 74,726 stars
Web process, Celery workers, beat scheduler, PostgreSQL and Redis. More capable than Metabase and considerably more to operate.
At 10 people it needs 5.2 GB of memory and 20.5 GB of disk, which fits the Starter 8 GB at VPSServer for $39.00 a month. Setting it up is roughly 16 hours of work, then 3 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full Tableau versus Apache Superset breakdown · Apache Superset at every team size
How the pricing was established
Tableau pricing was read from its own pricing page on 2026-09-14. Server prices come from the providers listed on the hosting page. The sizing model and the cost of your time are set out in full on the methodology page.