Fabivs
Hex
Hex: Hex if you need the same notebook model with more maturity, governance and a larger team behind it.
Fabi
AI notebooks combining SQL, Python and no-code for small data teams
As of 31 August 2026, Fabi has a free plan and paid plans start at $39/month. A notebook product for one-person and two-person data teams who need to answer ad hoc questions and publish the result without building a dashboard. Softwr lists it under Business Intelligence. Fabi is made by Fabi.ai, available on Web.
Overview
What Fabi does
Fabi builds what it calls Smartbooks: notebook documents that mix SQL against a connected database, Python cells, no-code transformations and AI-generated analysis, then publish as a Smart Report that non-technical colleagues can read. It sits between a Jupyter notebook, which nobody outside the data team will open, and a BI tool, which requires modelling work before it answers anything. The distinguishing commercial choice is that Fabi separates builders from viewers and prices them very differently. A Builder seat is 39 US dollars a month; the Team plan at 199 US dollars a month includes four builders and fifty viewers, with extra builders at 39 dollars each. A free Starter tier gives one builder, ten viewers, five Smartbooks and ten AI requests a day. That structure means an analyst can distribute findings widely without the readership driving the bill, which is the reverse of most BI licensing. The buyer is a startup or small operations team where one analyst supports the whole company and the questions arrive faster than dashboards can be built. The trade off is that Fabi is a young product from a small company: there is no meaningful governance layer, no enterprise catalogue, and choosing it means betting that a seed-stage vendor stays in business through the term of your data workflows.
What people use it for
- A single analyst at a startup fielding ad hoc questions faster than dashboards can be built for them
- An operations team that needs Python for a one-off analysis but has to hand the result to non-technical colleagues
- Replacing a set of scheduled Jupyter notebooks that nobody outside the data team can read or rerun
- Exploratory work against a warehouse where building a semantic model first would cost more than the answer is worth
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Fabi.
- Fabi is an early-stage company with a small team, so the durability risk is real and there is no obvious migration path for Smartbooks if it stops trading.
- There is no meaningful governance layer: no data catalogue, no certified metric definitions and limited lineage, so it does not scale to an organisation that needs a single agreed number.
- The free and Builder tiers cap AI requests, and the daily cap on Starter is reached quickly during genuine exploratory work.
- Connector counts are limited by tier, so the Builder plan at 39 dollars connects to exactly one data source, which is rarely enough in practice.
- It overlaps heavily with what Snowflake, Databricks and Hex now ship natively, so a company already paying for one of those is buying a fourth notebook interface.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Fabi
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- FabivsDeepnote
Deepnote: Deepnote if collaborative data science notebooks matter more than publishing to business readers.
- FabivsMetabase
Metabase: Metabase if the real need is repeatable dashboards rather than exploratory analysis.
Pricing
What Fabi costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Starter
Free
- One builder seat
- Ten dashboard viewers
- Five Smartbooks
- Ten AI requests per day
- Basic connectors and file uploads
Builder
$39 /mo
- Twenty-five Smart Report viewers
- Ten Smartbooks with workflows
- One data connector
- Scheduled reports
- Five hundred AI requests per month
Team
$199 /mo
- Four builder seats, extra seats at 39 USD
- Fifty viewers
- Premium connector
- Unlimited Smartbooks
- Unlimited AI requests
Enterprise
On request
- Unlimited builder seats
- Full connector access
- Custom security review
- Roadmap input
- Fractional data science support
Capabilities
Features
Smartbooks
Notebooks mixing SQL, Python, no-code steps and AI cells in one document
Smart Reports
Published, refreshable views of a notebook for non-technical readers
AI analysis
Natural language question to query, chart or workflow within a cell
Scheduled runs
Notebooks that refresh and redeliver on a schedule
Database connectors
Direct connections to warehouses, transactional databases and files
Viewer seats
Read-only recipients priced separately from builders
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is there a free plan?
Yes, a Starter tier with one builder, ten viewers, five Smartbooks and ten AI requests a day.
Do viewers cost money?
Viewers are bundled by tier rather than charged individually; builders are the priced seat.
Can I run arbitrary Python?
Yes, Smartbooks include Python cells alongside SQL and no-code steps.
How many data connectors does the entry paid plan include?
One. Additional and premium connectors come with the Team tier.
Keep looking
Where to go from Fabi
- Fabi alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Fabi pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Fabi badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Business Intelligence softwareThe full category
- Best Business Intelligence softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Business Intelligence software for
Compare Fabi with
- Hex
- Deepnote
- Mode
- Periscope Data
- Zenlytic
- Evidence
- Cube
- Reportz
- Anaplan
- Grow
- Luzmo
- Phocas
- DashThis
- Dundas BI
- Exa
- Geckoboard
- Glassbox
- Glean
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Fabi, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Fabi
Fabi alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Fabi pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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