Hex

What it is

Hex is a collaborative data notebook — SQL and Python cells that chain together into a shareable, interactive report. Its AI layer, Magic (and the newer Notebook Agent), writes SQL from a plain-English prompt, explains queries, fixes errors, and can draft whole analysis sections. For a PM the draw is text-to-SQL that runs against your actual warehouse tables, then leaves the query sitting right there so you (or a friendly analyst) can verify the joins before anyone acts on the result.

Our verdict

When your question needs live warehouse data rather than a static file, this is the tool that gets you closest to self-serve without flying blind. Magic is genuinely good at first-draft SQL, and because the whole thing is a notebook, the query, the result, and the chart live in one link you can drop in a Slack thread. The Community (free) tier is a real place to learn on.

Where it falls short: it assumes a connected, reasonably modeled warehouse — if your data isn’t already in Snowflake/BigQuery/Postgres with sane table names, Hex has nothing to point Magic at, and you’re back to needing a data team. The AI also writes confident SQL against columns it half-understands, so a wrong join or a silent fan-out will produce a plausible, wrong number. Always read the generated query.

Get value in 10 minutes

1. In Community/trial, connect a warehouse (or use a sample dataset) and open a new project.
2. In a SQL cell, click Magic and type the question: “Weekly active users for the last 8 weeks, from the events table, deduped by user_id.”
3. Read the SQL it generates — check the table, the date filter, and that it isn’t double-counting. Run it.
4. Add a follow-up cell: “Now break that by signup source and chart it as a line per source.” Share the resulting notebook link instead of pasting a screenshot.