Introduction

At Paradime, we launched the most advanced version of our AI co-pilot experience (what we call "Cursor for Data") on March 12th, but our journey began much earlier. Last week, during their developer day, dbt Labs™ also announced the general availability of their dbt™ Copilot.

This post offers a side-by-side comparison of how the AI experience in Paradime compares to that in dbt Cloud™.

Paradime's AI-timeline

At Paradime, we are building an advanced analytics platform designed specifically for the AI-era. We recognized the transformative potential of generative AI early in our development process.

Announcement

We announced our plans to build DinoAI more than a year ago with the belief that the future of analytics would be AI-first.

First Release

We released the first generation of DinoAI in April 2024 as a copilot within Paradime to support daily work like writing commits, asking questions, writing documentation, tests, and much more.

The co-pilot performed a deterministic set of actions for a defined set of problems or questions. We built it as a system where the user could:

1. Ask a defined set of questions and get answers

2. Ask any open-ended question and get answers

Since our first release, we've worked closely with customers to understand how the existing system met their needs and where improvements were needed. We fine-tuned system prompts, refined the UI, and implemented hundreds of small fixes to enhance the user experience.

"Cursor for Data"

The culmination of these efforts led us to launch the most advanced version of our DinoAI Copilot on March 12th, 2025. Our "Cursor for Data" functions as an IDE that can write code and answer questions, significantly reducing manual work in analytics engineering. With complete context of your warehouse, schema, and metadata, analytics engineers can work at unprecedented speed and scale with Paradime.

Comparison between Paradime DinoAI and dbt Copilot

Feature Comparison

While we have been pushing the boundaries of what's possible and continue to invest in an AI-first approach, dbt Labs™ has taken a more cautious and legacy-minded approach.

One of our users summarized it best:

dbt™ Copilot is limited to 3 predefined buttons, with Paradime I have un-limited freedom to do anything I can imagine

The current dbt™ Copilot experience offers a button-based AI assistant with three primary functions.

(Source: https://www.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-developer-day-2025)

This design reflects a more traditional approach rather than an AI-first design, which creates several limitations:

• Limited ability to instruct the AI to add specific tests to models or update existing models

• Difficulty in instructing the AI to remove certain tests that aren't needed

• Constraints when generating documentation for only newly added models

The dbt™ Copilot is an Enterprise feature, requiring users to invest $500/user/month (based on what we know) to access this functionality, which introduces significant friction in AI-adoption within the organization.

This approach appears to be a more trying to stay relevant in the AI space rather than a full commitment to an AI-first workflow.

In contrast, DinoAI provides a complete "Cursor for Data" experience where end users can harness the full power of AI to:

• Go from a blank slate to a finished data pipeline in minutes

• Create models, sources, and configurations

• Optimize existing models for cost and performance

• Generate docs, tests, and semantic definitions

• Update models with new source tables and columns

• Use the full warehouse context to generate code without hallucinations

• Use .dinorules to enforce guidelines like always putting commas in front for SQL

Real-World Application

In practice, DinoAI functions as your analytics partner—an AI analyst that can code for you, answer questions, and eliminate repetitive work.

Our pricing structure makes this technology accessible, with plans starting at $25 per user/month for infrequent use and $55 per user/month for standard use multiple times a week.

You can see how DinoAI accelerates data work in our launch video:

Conclusion

We're living in the AI era, and analytics tooling needs to evolve accordingly. Paradime's DinoAI represents our commitment to building truly AI-native analytics solutions that deliver tangible productivity gains.

Whether you're looking for a dbt Cloud™ replacement or seeking to maximize the return on your existing dbt Core™ investments, Paradime offers the most advanced alternative with AI at its core.

If you want to know more, you can:

• Connect with me on LinkedIn

• Sign up for Paradime at paradime.io to experience DinoAI firsthand

• Request a demo to see how DinoAI can accelerate your team's analytics workflow