How to Self-Host Metabase Business Intelligence & SQL Analytics on Contabo VPS with Docker

The Cost of Commercial BI Tools (Tableau & Looker)

Commercial Business Intelligence platforms charge astronomical fees—Tableau charges $75 per user per month, and Looker easily runs into tens of thousands of dollars annually. Metabase is the world's most popular open-source business intelligence tool, enabling non-technical team members to ask questions, build executive KPI dashboards, and schedule automated Slack reports directly from production databases.

Deploying Metabase on Contabo VPS via Docker Compose

mkdir -p ~/metabase && cd ~/metabase
nano docker-compose.yml

services:
  metabase:
    image: metabase/metabase:latest
    container_name: metabase
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3000:3000"
    environment:
      - MB_DB_TYPE=postgres
      - MB_DB_DBNAME=metabase_db
      - MB_DB_PORT=5432
      - MB_DB_USER=metabase_user
      - MB_DB_PASS=db_secret_password
      - MB_DB_HOST=metabase_db
    depends_on:
      - metabase_db

  metabase_db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=metabase_db
      - POSTGRES_USER=metabase_user
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=db_secret_password

docker compose up -d

Bind to Nginx on port 3000 with SSL, connect your read-only database replica, and begin visualizing business growth with total privacy.