Best alternatives to Kavla in 2026

SQL notebooks are linear by nature: cell after cell, top to bottom, which gets messy fast once an analysis branches into several directions you're comparing side by side. Kavla reframes data exploration as a spatial problem instead — an infinite canvas where each query and its results is a node you can place, connect, and rearrange freely, closer to a mind map than a notebook. Technically, it runs on DuckDB WASM, meaning the actual SQL engine executes locally in your browser via WebAssembly rather than sending your data to a server — useful both for speed and for keeping data local. On top of that local-first engine, it adds real-time multiplayer collaboration, so a teammate can be arranging and querying the same canvas alongside you. It's positioned as free, with no account or server dependency required to start exploring a dataset.