Apache Zeppelin vs Hex

Apache Zeppelin is a web-based notebook for interactive data analytics and collaborative documents. Its pluggable interpreters support work in SQL, Scala, Python, R, and other languages, with backends including Apache Spark and Flink. Use it to ingest and explore data, analyze results, and create visualizations. Built-in charts can display output from any language backend; pivot charts support drag-and-drop aggregation. The Spark integration can provide SparkContext and SQLContext automatically, load dependencies at runtime, and show job progress or cancel jobs. Its SQL interpreter connects to JDBC sources such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redshift, and Apache Hive. Collaborators can share notebook URLs and receive changes in real time. The project documents single-user and multi-user deployments, including LDAP support. Zeppelin is open source under the Apache License 2.0 and costs nothing. It runs on Linux, macOS, self-hosted, and web environments. Anonymous access is enabled by default, so its documentation recommends configuring authentication or limiting use to a secured, trusted environment.

Hex is a hosted data platform for exploring data, asking questions, and building data applications through notebooks and conversational self-service. It supports SQL, Python, and R, with real-time collaboration and version history. Users can connect data warehouses and local TXT, CSV, JSON, Parquet, Avro, and XLSX files, as well as metadata, semantic-layer, catalog, machine-learning, and workflow tools. Airflow, Dagster, and dbt integrations can trigger analytical flows and app runs from data pipelines. Hex says its agent grounds answers in organizational context and can connect with Claude, Codex, Cursor, Slack, MCP, a CLI, APIs, or custom agents. Users can build apps from prompts, with code underneath and controls for the finished app. Context Studio and Evals provide visibility into topics, trends, and warnings about answer quality. Community is free; Professional costs $36 a month per Editor, and Team costs $75 a month per Editor. Community and Professional allow up to five published apps, while Team and Enterprise allow unlimited published apps. A 14-day trial is listed.