How to embed content

Lightdash allows you to embed your content using expirable URLs and tokens. This is a great way to enable self-serve analytics in your own application and platform by leveraging the insights you’ve got in Lightdash and making them available to your own users.

Embedding is available to all Lightdash Cloud users, get in touch to have this feature enabled in your account.

What can you embed?

Lightdash supports embedding two types of content, each designed for different use cases:

Dashboards

Embed complete dashboards with multiple visualizations, filters, and tabs. Perfect for providing comprehensive analytics views in your application.

Use cases:

• Executive dashboards in admin panels
• Customer-facing analytics portals
• Embedded reporting for SaaS applications

Learn more about embedding dashboards →

Charts

Embed individual saved charts for focused, single-metric displays. Charts provide a minimal UI for clean integration.

Use cases:

• Single KPI widgets in applications
• Embedded metrics in marketing pages
• Focused analytics in workflows

Chart embedding requires the React SDK. iframe embedding is only available for dashboards.

Learn more about embedding charts →

How can you embed content?

Lightdash offers two embedding methods. The choice mainly comes down to what you’re embedding and how much customization you need.

iframe embedding is simple to set up. You only need to generate a JWT, construct a URL, and add this to an <iframe> tag. There are no additional setup requirements and this works anywhere (React, Vue, plain HTML). Note that iframe embedding currently only supports dashboards (chart embedding via iframe is not supported).

React SDK (@lightdash/sdk) is the more powerful option. It supports both dashboards and charts, lets you pass filters programmatically, hook into user interaction callbacks (like when someone navigates to Explore), and apply custom styling to match your app. It requires a React/Next.js app and CORS configuration on the Lightdash instance (Cloud customers need to contact Lightdash to set that up).

Both methods use the same JWT-based authentication and security model.

Quick comparison

Feature	iframe	React SDK
Dashboards	✓	✓
Individual charts	✗	✓
Setup complexity	Low	Medium
CORS needed	No	Yes
Programmatic filters	Via JWT config	Via SDK filters prop
Custom styling	Limited	Full control
Framework requirement	None	React / Next.js

Passing filters to embedded dashboards

Both methods support filters, just differently:

• JWT config — Set filters in the token payload at embed time. Works for both methods.
• React SDK filters prop — Pass them dynamically at runtime. Better if filters need to change based on the logged-in user.

Quick start: Embed a dashboard

This quick start will walk you through embedding your first dashboard using an iframe.

Step 1: Create an embed secret

First, you need to generate a secret per project. This secret is like a password that will help you encrypt the URLs so we know the access is valid.

You can regenerate the secret by clicking on the Generate new secret button. If you do this, people with an old URL will automatically lose access to any previously shared embed URL.

Step 2: Add allowed dashboards

Only selected dashboards can be accessed via embed URLs. Add the dashboard you want to embed to the allowed list.

Step 3: Configure and preview

Under the “Configure” section, you can:

• Select which dashboard to embed
• Set token expiration time
• Configure interactivity (filters, exports, etc.)
• Add user attributes for row-level security

Click on Preview to see how the embedded content will look, and click on Generate & copy URL to get a one-off embed URL for testing.

Step 4: Generate tokens programmatically

Although you can generate URLs directly from Lightdash with a long expiration, it is recommended to generate your own JWTs in your backend with a short expiration using your secret to make sure people can’t be using embed URLs outside your app.

Lightdash provides code snippets you can copy and use in your app to generate valid embed URLs:

Next steps

Embedding dashboards

Complete guide to dashboard embedding with all configuration options

Embedding charts

Learn how to embed individual charts for focused displays

User attributes & row-level security

Show different data to different users with user attributes

iframe embedding reference

URL patterns and HTML embedding details

React SDK reference

Seamless React integration with advanced features

Embedding API reference

Complete JWT structure and configuration options

Common questions

Do I need a Lightdash account to view embedded content?

No, embedded Lightdash content is available to view by anyone (not just folks with a Lightdash login).

So, for example, you could embed a dashboard in your product, and anyone who has access to your product would have access to that dashboard. No need to login to Lightdash.

We make sure that the links are secure and have a set expiry time that you pick.

How does security work?

Embedded content is secured using JWT (JSON Web Tokens) that you sign with your embed secret. The token includes:

• What content to display (dashboard or chart)
• Expiration time
• User attributes for row-level filtering
• Permissions for interactivity (filters, exports, etc.)

Tokens are short-lived and should be generated server-side to prevent exposure of your embed secret.

Can I show different data to different users?

Yes! You can use user attributes to implement row-level security in your embedded content. This allows you to filter data based on the viewing user’s properties (e.g., tenant ID, region, etc.).