Lightdash
BI that reads your dbt models, so metrics are defined once.
87
sovereigntyLightdash builds its entire semantic layer from your existing dbt project: define a metric once in dbt, and it appears in BI with the same definition everywhere. That solves the specific and expensive problem of the same number meaning three different things in three dashboards, which is where most BI trust breaks down. Around 6k stars — the smallest here — and it only makes sense if you already run dbt. Where you do, it is the tightest fit on this page.
OPEN SOURCEMIT (open core; paid cloud tier)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT (open core; paid cloud tier)
PricingOpen-source core free and self-hostable. Lightdash Cloud is paid.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +Metrics defined once in dbt and used everywhere — no drifting definitions
- +Version-controlled BI, reviewed in pull requests like code
- +MIT core
- +Fast to adopt if dbt is already in place
Where it falls short
- −Effectively requires dbt — useless without it
- −Smallest project and community on this page
- −Fewer visualisation types than Superset
- −Less suited to ad-hoc exploration by non-technical staff
Lightdash as an alternative to
Where Lightdash shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Lightdash head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.