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Zasper and Hex, side by side

Hex is a hosted analytics platform for data teams and the people they share their work with. Zasper is an open-source IDE for Jupyter that runs on your own machine. Both put an AI agent beside your notebooks; where they differ is where the work lives, what it is saved as, and who pays for the agent.

Question	Zasper	Hex
What it is	An IDE for Jupyter notebooks	A hosted analytics and BI platform
Where it runs	Your laptop, or a server you run	Hex's cloud, on AWS; a single-tenant deployment is an Enterprise add-on
Your notebooks	`.ipynb`, read and written as Jupyter writes them, in your own folder	Hex projects, saved as YAML; `.ipynb` can be imported, and exporting back to it breaks SQL cells and inputs
Languages	Any Jupyter kernel: Python, R, Julia, C++, Scala, Go, Bash and more, with SQL cells beside them	SQL, Python and R, with R not yet at parity with Python
The AI agent	Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex or any ACP agent, on your own subscription; every change it makes can be reviewed and undone	The Hex agent, with AI usage drawn from monthly per-seat credits; bring your own key on Enterprise
Agents outside the app	An MCP server, on every install	An MCP server, on Team and Enterprise
Git	Built in: branch, stage, commit and diff, notebooks included	Export projects to a Git repo, on Team and Enterprise
Price	Free under the AGPL-3.0, with a commercial license for products that need one	A free Community plan; Professional at $36 and Team at $75 per editor a month; Enterprise priced on request
Source	Open source	Proprietary

Hex's column is from Hex's own pricing, documentation and security pages, read on 19 October 2026; the links are under Sources below. Prices are as listed on that day.

Which one

Pick the one built for your work

They overlap less than a feature list suggests. The question is who the notebooks are for and where they have to live.

Choose Hex if

You publish dashboards and data apps to people who do not write code.
You want semantic models, scheduled runs and alerts managed for you.
Your team wants a hosted workspace with nothing to install.

Choose Zasper if

Your notebooks are .ipynb and should stay that way, in your git.
Your code and data have to stay on your machine or a server you control.
You already pay for Claude Code, Codex or Gemini and want it in your notebooks.
You work in kernels beyond Python, SQL and R.
You want it free and open source.

Download Zasper

Sources

Where the Hex column comes from

Read on 19 October 2026.

Hex pricing: plans, per-editor prices, AI credits, bring-your-own-key and the single-tenant add-on
Hex security: "Hex uses AWS for data processing and storage", and single-tenant deployment
Import and export projects: .ipynb import, the YAML format, what breaks on export, and Git export on Team and Enterprise
Hex MCP server: available on Team and Enterprise
Hex environment and the R project changelog: SQL, Python and R

Something here out of date? Open an issue and it will be corrected.

One binary, and your notebooks open in it

No account to make, and your files stay on your machine.

Download Zasper Try it in the browser

Zasper and Hex, side by side

Pick the one built for your work

Where the Hex column comes from

One binary, and your notebooks open in it

Resources

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