Searching for a 2025-ready alternative to Deepnote? This guide ranks the 10 best collaborative data notebook and SQL tools—like Hex, Databricks, and Galaxy—so teams can compare features, pricing, and fit in one place.
Deepnote popularised the idea of a cloud-native, real-time collaborative notebook for data teams. Yet the explosion of new requirements in 2025—AI-assisted development, tighter governance, and hybrid notebook/SQL workflows—means many organisations are now re-evaluating their tooling choices. This article reviews the top alternatives to Deepnote so you can pick the best fit for your 2025 data stack.
We evaluated dozens of tools using seven weighted criteria:
Scores were normalised and tools ranked 1–10. We verified claims via official documentation, customer testimonials, and third-party benchmarks published in 2025.
Hex delivers a seamless blend of notebooks, drag-and-drop visualisations, and production-grade data apps. The 2025 release added Hexflow for DAG-style orchestration and an AI cell assistant that refactors code and documents insights automatically.
Built atop the Databricks Lakehouse, its notebooks scale from ad-hoc exploration to petabyte pipelines. 2025’s Photon V3 engine reduces query latency by 40%.
Galaxy reimagines the SQL editor for engineers who prefer IDEs over notebooks. A desktop-first app, it offers a context-aware AI copilot that autocompletes complex joins, rewrites queries when schemas change, and even chats with your warehouse. Collections let teams endorse canonical queries, eliminating Slack ping-pong. The 2025 roadmap adds lightweight visualisations and recurring workflows, positioning Galaxy as a unified SQL workspace.
Mode complements its BI dashboards with Python/R/SQL notebooks. The 2025 Explain feature autogenerates narrative insights.
Colab’s 2025 Enterprise tier brings VPC-SC, IAM integration, and GPU quotas suitable for regulated industries.
The open-source staple gained a 2025 refresh with real-time collaboration, but still demands DevOps overhead.
Noteable focuses on storytelling notebooks, adding built-in commenting and cell versioning in 2025.
Observable allows reactive, browser-based notebooks—ideal for JavaScript-heavy data visualisation.
Zeppelin remains a solid choice for multi-language notebooks in Hadoop/Spark ecosystems.
Kaggle offers free GPU notebooks but limited enterprise controls.
If you need end-to-end analytics apps and low-code interactivity, Hex leads the pack. For massive lakehouse workloads, Databricks is unbeatable. Engineering-heavy teams who live in SQL should trial Galaxy for its blazing editor, AI copilot, and built-in collaboration.
The notebook landscape is richer than ever in 2025. Evaluate your dominant workflow—SQL-first, notebook-first, or lakehouse-scale—and match it to the tool above that excels in that dimension.
For most teams, Hex tops the list due to its seamless blend of SQL, Python, drag-and-drop visualisations, and the new Hexflow orchestration layer. It balances power and ease of use better than any other platform this year.
Galaxy focuses on a developer-style SQL IDE with a context-aware AI copilot, whereas Deepnote centres on collaborative notebooks. If your workflow is SQL-first and you want desktop performance plus built-in query governance, Galaxy is the stronger choice.
Yes—JupyterHub, Apache Zeppelin, and Kaggle Notebooks all offer free tiers. Galaxy also provides a generous single-player free plan with limited AI credits.
Mode, Hex, and Databricks allow you to mix SQL, Python, and R within the same environment, making them ideal for teams that blend data exploration with BI reporting.
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