Alternatives

Sidequery is a versatile tool, but it's not for everyone. We'll be real with you about some of our strengths and weaknesses compared to some other alternatives.

Sometimes you just want to write a query. And then make a chart out of that. And then maybe another chart from the same data. And then a few more charts; maybe a dashboard. We don't like thinking about what charting library to use or how to make your chart look prettier or be more interactive. Or the how jupyter magic syntax worked (how do I do aliases again?), or the Python DB API. You get the point.

We know Sidequery can be polarizing. It might work for you, it might not. If you're just starting out building analytics for a small project or startup, it could be a great choice. You can version control your work git, easily read the tiles (no .ipynb nonsense), and heck, probably have an LLM convert them to another format for another tool if you ever outgrow Sidequery. We're not going to lock your data or "api access" behind an enterprise plan.

You can see what we're good at here. Below are some situations where Sidequery might not be the best choice:

Python Notebooks

If you must have Python inside notebooks, Sidequery is not the tool for you. But who knows, maybe it will be a fresh breath of air. Need to analyze that few hundred mb sql file and join against the Postgres replica and your Lakehouse but want to avoid loading into the data warehouse? Sidequery might be the one— embrace DuckDB. If you're set on Python notebooks, it's hard to beat the price of Jupyter. jupysql is a great option for SQL in Jupyter notebooks. Hex does a great job with both Python and SQL notebooks and has many similarities with Sidequery.

Multi-player BI

If you need enterprise access controls, Sidequery is probably not the tool for you. Heck, Sidequery doesn't even let you share results yet, but that's coming soon, along with team project collaboration. Lots of other tools handle collaboration & data governance very well today, like Tableau, Power BI Looker, Mode, Omni, Metabase, Preset.