Hex
The Data Workspace for Teams. Work with data in collaborative SQL and Python notebooks. Share as interactive data apps that anyone can use.
Hex vs Polynote:
a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Polynote
Polynote is a different kind of notebook. It supports mixing multiple languages in one notebook, and sharing data between them seamlessly. It encourages reproducible notebooks with its immutable data model.
Hex
Polynote
Setup
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
No, you must host it yourself
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
No, you must use a managed offering
You can self-host (setup in hours)
Features
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Jupyter-compatible
Not Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
SQL
Scala
Python
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
Connect to data warehouses (Google BigQuery, ClickHouse, etc.)
Connect to databases (MariaDB, SQL Server, etc.)
Provided file storage
Unknown
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
UI for building charts
Unknown
Reactivity
Reactivity
Full, realtime reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Notebook scheduling is built in
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
Execution is reproducible by default
Run notebooks in containers
With effort, you can make reproducible environments
Version history is built in
File-based (use Git)
Multiple editors at the same time
File-based (use Git)
Comments
Comments
Comment on items within a notebook
File-based (use GitHub)
Notebook organization
Notebook organization
View notebooks in a list
File-based
Licensing
License
License
Proprietary
Open-source (Apache 2.0)
Price
Price
Free tier
Pay-per-user
Pay for compute
Free