Every cell below is a real run against a shared DuckDB (and Snowflake trial) dataset. The same Jaffle-shop questions run through Semantic Rails, MetricFlow, Cube, Malloy, Snowflake Semantic Views, and KtX. Where a layer can't express the intent as a governed primitive, the question still gets answered - but the cost shows up as a helper view, a precomputed rollup, or query-level SQL.
Coming from MetricFlow? Translate your existing project with one command.
The translator reads your semantic_models/
directory or semantic_manifest.json, and
emits a complete package directory you can load, edit, and
commit. Imported metrics keep their semantics and are
easily upgraded to the more expressive primitives used by
Semantic Rails.
uv run semantic-rails import \
--from metricflow \
--source path/to/target/semantic_manifest.json \
--output configs/semantic_rails \
--package-id my_package Any agentic governance solution should be able to answer
the first 7 questions as table-stakes. The other 8
questions are still relatively basic, but demonstrate
where the different solution architectures deviate.
Count, sum, group-by-month. Every layer can basically do the basics. Otherwise they wouldn't be in the conversation.
| Semantic Rails | 7 native |
| MetricFlow | 7 native |
| Cube | 6 native · 1 workaround (q05) |
| Malloy | 7 native |
| Snowflake SV | 7 native |
| KtX | 7 native |
Metric predicates, temporal validity, same-store conversion, contextual entity-graph inheritance. Without these as primitives, your agent leaves the governed API and writes raw SQL against the warehouse.
| Semantic Rails | 9 native |
| MetricFlow | 2 native · 7 precomputed |
| Cube | 3 workaround · 6 precomputed |
| Malloy | 9 workaround |
| Snowflake SV | 9 workaround |
| KtX | 9 workaround |
Sixteen questions that any analyst should be able to answer.
All 16 normalized outputs match across the six layers; configuration parity rules are published in the methodology.
| Question | Semantic Rails | MetricFlow | Cube | Malloy | Snowflake SV | KtX |
|---|
Your semantic layer needs to work with your data. Since
we're open-source, it's easy to add more dialects and more
connectors. Don't lock yourself into a proprietary
solution.
| Backend | Semantic Rails OSS adapter | dbt Semantic Layer Cloud | Cube | Malloy | Snowflake Semantic Views | KtX primary source / ktx-sl |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snowflake | native connector | native platform | native connector | native connector | warehouse-native | native connector |
| BigQuery | native connector | native platform | native connector | native connector | no | native connector |
| Databricks | native connector | native platform | native connector | native connector | no | dialect-only |
| Amazon Redshift | no | native platform | native connector | no | no | no |
| SQL Server | no | no | native connector | bridge | no | native connector |
| Microsoft Fabric | no | no | native connector | no | no | no |
| PostgreSQL | native connector | native platform | native connector | native connector | no | native connector |
| MySQL | no | no | native connector | native connector | no | native connector |
| ClickHouse | native connector | no | native connector | no | no | native connector |
| Amazon Athena | native connector | no | native connector | no | no | no |
| Trino / Presto | no | Trino only | native connector | native connector | no | no |
| DuckDB | native connector | no | native connector | native connector | no | dialect-only |
| MotherDuck | native connector | no | native connector | native connector | no | no |
| DuckLake | native connector | no | no | no | no | no |
| SQLite | no | no | native connector | no | no | native connector |
Every configuration, query, and normalized output is in the repo. If you find a better configuration for any layer, submit a PR and we will gladly update the benchmark.