head to head · open source
Cube vs Elementary Data
Cube has 20,857 GitHub stars, 2,138 forks, 1,185 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Elementary Data has 2,410 stars, 226 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cube leads on adoption by 765% (20,857 vs 2,410 stars). Cube is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; Elementary Data is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Cube has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Elementary Data 9%. Cube was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (bigquery), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| Cube | Elementary Data | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 226 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cube if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Elementary Data if
- You want the Elementary Data feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and Elementary Data fits your workflow better
About Cube
Cube Core is an open source semantic layer for AI, BI, and embedded analytics. It lives in the data analytics and data engineering ecosystem for SQL warehouses, BI tools, applications, and AI agents. It lets teams define metrics, dimensions, joins, and access rules once in code, then expose them through SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs. It is headless and ships no user interface.
About Elementary Data
Elementary Data is an open source, dbt native data observability tool for data and analytics engineers. It lives in the dbt and modern data warehouse ecosystem, and it is distributed as a CLI that works alongside the Elementary dbt package. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0, is written primarily in HTML, and is maintained by the Elementary team with a homepage at elementary data.com and documentation at docs.elementary data.com.
read the full Elementary Data overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cube or Elementary Data more popular?
Cube has 20,857 GitHub stars and Elementary Data has 2,410. Cube has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cube and Elementary Data free?
Both are open source. Cube has no licence declared in this registry, and Elementary Data is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Cube and Elementary Data?
Cube is written in Rust and Elementary Data in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Cube or Elementary Data?
Choose Cube if you want the larger community (20,857 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Elementary Data if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.