Lightdash

Lightdash is an open-source business intelligence (BI) platform built to work natively with dbt, the popular data transformation tool that has become a standard in the modern data stack. Lightdash's core idea is to let data teams define their metrics and models once, in dbt, and then expose them through a self-serve BI layer so the whole organization can explore data and build dashboards — without duplicating metric definitions or maintaining a separate, disconnected BI semantic layer. This keeps a single source of truth from data modeling all the way to the charts business users see.

For data teams already using dbt, this integration is genuinely elegant. The metrics and dimensions you define in your dbt project become directly available in Lightdash, so analysts and business users can slice and visualize data confidently, knowing the numbers are governed and consistent. This solves a perennial problem where BI tools redefine metrics separately, leading to conflicting numbers and endless "why don't these match?" debates. Lightdash keeps the definitions in code, version-controlled and trustworthy.

As an open-source tool, Lightdash can be self-hosted for control and cost efficiency, inspected and extended, and adopted without the lock-in and expense of proprietary enterprise BI platforms; a cloud option exists for convenience. It provides the expected BI capabilities — interactive exploration, dashboards, charts, scheduling and sharing — while staying close to the developer-friendly, code-first ethos of the modern data stack. This makes it especially appealing to data-savvy teams who use dbt and want their BI to align with that workflow. For organizations that want governed, self-serve analytics built on a single source of truth, and that value open source and the dbt ecosystem, Lightdash offers a thoughtful, modern and well-integrated BI solution.