head to head · open source
CloudQuery vs Lightdash
CloudQuery has 6,521 GitHub stars, 558 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Lightdash has 6,145 stars, 777 forks, 1,018 open issues and last shipped today. CloudQuery leads on adoption by 6% (6,521 vs 6,145 stars). CloudQuery is written in Go under MPL-2.0; Lightdash is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. CloudQuery has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Lightdash 13%. Lightdash was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| CloudQuery | Lightdash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.5K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 558 | ⑂ 777 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloudQuery if
- You weight community size — 6.5K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lightdash if
- You want the Lightdash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Lightdash fits your workflow better
About CloudQuery
CloudQuery is an open source, Go based cloud asset inventory and ELT tool, licensed under MPL 2.0, that syncs metadata from AWS, Azure, GCP, and more than 70 cloud and SaaS sources into a data warehouse so platform, security, and FinOps teams can query it with SQL.
read the full CloudQuery overview →
About Lightdash
Lightdash is an open source, agentic business intelligence platform for modern data teams, written in TypeScript and distributed under a NOASSERTION license. It lives in the data and analytics ecosystem, specifically the data engineering and integration space, and it is built around dbt and warehouse native workflows. The project describes itself as agentic BI, meaning analytics is intended to move at the speed of code rather than through point and click configuration alone.
read the full Lightdash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloudQuery or Lightdash more popular?
CloudQuery has 6,521 GitHub stars and Lightdash has 6,145. CloudQuery has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloudQuery and Lightdash free?
Both are open source. CloudQuery is licensed under MPL-2.0, and Lightdash has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between CloudQuery and Lightdash?
CloudQuery is written in Go and Lightdash in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, CloudQuery or Lightdash?
Choose CloudQuery if you want the larger community (6,521 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Lightdash if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.