Gaur and Metabase.
Metabase is a BI app with a semantic layer built in. We sit underneath a BI app, your product, and your AI agents. The two can coexist. The question is which one is the system of record.
BI app with a semantic layer, or backend that serves the semantic layer.
A BI app with a semantic layer (Data Studio).
Metabase is a BI app: dashboards, a visual query builder, an embedded SDK and natural-language queries via Metabot. Its Data Studio lets teams define reusable models and metrics inside Metabase. Queries are pushed down to the connected warehouse or database.
The contracts and the API are the product.
We ingest from your sources into our own engine, let you publish governed contracts, and serve them through three protocols on a single key: a query endpoint, a chat endpoint, and an MCP server. The semantic layer is the shipped surface, not a feature inside a dashboarding app.
They aren't direct substitutes.
If you want a BI app that internal users open in their browser and click around in, that's Metabase. If you want a single governed definition behind your internal dashboards, your customer-facing product, and your AI agents, that's us. A real setup can use both: Metabase for analyst exploration, us as the backend the rest of your software calls.
The honest table.
Both tools genuinely have semantic-layer features and MCP support. The differences are where they live and what the primary surface is.
Coming from Metabase: your Metabase dashboards can keep running. Move the semantic-layer definitions into contracts so the same numbers reach your apps and AI agents.
If the comparison you wanted was sharper.
vs Traditional BI
Tableau, Looker, Power BI: how Gaur sits underneath dashboarding apps rather than replacing them.
vs Cube
The other obvious peer in the semantic-layer space. Ingest-and-serve vs push-down on your warehouse.
vs dbt Semantic Layer
dbt SL is tied to dbt models on the warehouse. Gaur is decoupled and runs in its own engine.
You run your business.
We run your analytics.
Hop on a 30-minute call. We'll connect a sandbox to your warehouse and show you Gaur on your numbers.
