Hex vs MotherDuck
Hex
hex.techMotherDuck
motherduck.comSide by side
| Figure | Hex | MotherDuck |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $36/mo | $250/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 3 |
| Spec score · Cloud Analytics Solutions | 8.2 (#8) | 7.9 (#13) |
| Spec score · SQL Query Tools | 8.1 (#11) | 8.0 (#14) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Integrations | Hex connects to data warehouses, local files including TXT, CSV, JSON, Parquet, Avro, and XLSX, metadata and semantic-layer tools, catalogs, machine-learning tools, and workflow orchestrators. | The maker lists integrations with tools including dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, Hex, Tableau, and Omni. |
| Security | The Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR, CCPA, EU-US DPF, Swiss-US DPF, and UK-US DPF badges. | MotherDuck states that it has completed SOC 2 Type II attestation and is GDPR verified by GDPR Local. |
| Support | The pricing comparison lists email support on Community and Professional, priority SLA support options on Team, and Enterprise SLA support options including Slack and Microsoft Teams where offered. | Lite includes community support, while Business includes support from MotherDuck experts. |
Plans
In their own words
Hex
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.
MotherDuck
MotherDuck is a serverless cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB for data teams, app developers, and AI agents. Hypertenancy gives each user, customer, or agent an isolated DuckDB instance, called a Duckling. Teams can share databases through read-only objects that let recipients query data without exporting files or making another copy. The MotherDuck MCP Server enables AI agents to inspect catalogs, run SQL, read Guides, create Dives, and manage Flights. Flights are scheduled Python pipelines that run inside MotherDuck; Dives are interactive visualizations that users can filter, drill into, share, or embed in an app. Listed integrations include dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, Hex, Tableau, and Omni. Access is through web and API, with SQL notebooks, team query sharing, and AI query assistance. The Lite plan is free and includes up to 3 internal active users, 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage, and 10 hours of Pulse compute per month. Business costs $250 a month per organization plus usage, with a 7-day free trial. Lite includes community support; Business includes expert support.