Lightdash
Lightdash is an open source BI layer that turns dbt-core models into explorable metrics and dashboards. It reads dbt metadata instead of reinventing a semantic layer in the UI. We assess it when dbt is already the analytics engineering source of truth.
Blurb
Lightdash is the open source BI tool that connects to your dbt project. Define metrics once in dbt, explore them in Lightdash.
Summary
What it is: Web app plus CLI that syncs dbt schema.yml metrics and dimensions into self-serve charts and dashboards.
When to use: Warehouse analytics owned by dbt; want OSS BI without rebuilding metrics in Metabase or Apache Superset.
When to skip: No dbt discipline in the warehouse. Prefer Redash for ad hoc SQL only.
Key features: dbt-native metrics, Git-backed definitions, Slack/email alerts on charts, optional Lightdash Cloud.
Details
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Deploy | Docker or Lightdash Cloud; connects to warehouse dbt already targets |
| Fit | Pairs with dbt-core and BigQuery, Snowflake, or Postgres |
References