# Apache Druid vs DuckDB

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** DuckDB

| Attribute | Apache Druid | DuckDB |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 49.1 (54% (medium)) | 59.1 (51% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 264 | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | 14,064 | 42,154 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 15,285,415 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Apache Druid is an open source analytics database designed for fast queries and real-time data ingestion. It excels at powering UIs, running operational queries, and handling high concurrency. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://druid.apache.org","question":"What is Apache Druid?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Druid is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://druid.apache.org","question":"Is Apache Druid free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Apache Druid. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://druid.apache.org","question":"What platforms does Apache Druid support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Druid can be deployed on-premise and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://druid.apache.org","question":"Can Apache Druid be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Druid is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/apache/druid","question":"Is Apache Druid open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"An in-process SQL analytical database that runs natively in applications across operating systems and environments. Supports querying files and cloud data directly with a SQL dialect and includes vector search capabilities. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"What is DuckDB?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"DuckDB is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the MIT licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"Is DuckDB free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"DuckDB supports the web, Windows, macOS, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"What platforms does DuckDB support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. DuckDB can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"Can DuckDB be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 27 integrations for DuckDB, including Postgres, AWS, S3, Azure, Google Cloud, Hugging Face, SQLite and MySQL, plus 19 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"What does DuckDB integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. DuckDB is published under the MIT licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb","question":"Is DuckDB open source?","confidence":0.99},{"answer":"DuckDB is available worldwide. The vendor is headquartered in the Netherlands.","source":"https://duckdb.org","question":"Where is DuckDB available?","confidence":0.75}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Optimized for real-time analytics with rapid query execution on streaming and batch data. Provides native integration with Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, and RabbitMQ for low-latency ingestion at scale. | A portable analytical database that runs locally or embedded in applications, with PostgreSQL-like SQL and APIs for major programming languages, supporting popular data formats including CSV, JSON, Parquet, and Apache Iceberg. |
| features.capabilities | `{"deployment":"self","sql_dialect":"vendor","architecture":"separated","compute_model":"clusters","license_class":"permissive","semi_structured":"functional","streaming_ingest":true}` | `{"in_db_ml":true,"deployment":"embedded","sql_dialect":"vendor","license_class":"permissive","table_formats":"Parquet, CSV, JSON, Iceberg, Delta Lake, Vortex, DuckLake, Lance, Arrow, Avro, E","semi_structured":"functional","federation_query":true}` |
| integrations.count | 3 | 27 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Apache Kafka"},{"name":"Amazon Kinesis"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"Kinesis"},{"name":"RabbitMQ"}]` | `[{"name":"Postgres"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"SQLite"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"Iceberg"},{"name":"Delta Lake"},{"name":"Parquet"},{"name":"JSON"},{"name":"Arrow"},{"name":"Avro"},{"name":"Pandas"},{"name":"dplyr"},{"name":"Jupyter"},{"name":"Marimo"},{"name":"Claude"},{"name":"Cloudflare"},{"name":"ODBC"},{"name":"HTTP"},{"name":"Excel"},{"name":"Vortex"},{"name":"DuckLake"},{"name":"Lance"},{"name":"Geospatial formats"},{"name":"PostgreSQL","category":"database"},{"name":"Apache Iceberg","category":"table_format"},{"name":"ADBC","native":true}]` |
| language.primary | Java | C++ |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://druid.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T21:09:04.526Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Free, open source under MIT license","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://duckdb.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T15:30:03.636Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 61 | 33 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-38.0.0","date":"2026-10-01T16:04:21Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-38.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-37.0.0","date":"2026-05-08T22:00:21Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-37.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-36.0.0","date":"2026-02-09T14:50:03Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-36.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-35.0.1","date":"2025-12-15T20:23:38Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-35.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-35.0.0","date":"2025-11-18T04:34:00Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-35.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-34.0.0","date":"2025-08-11T15:12:41Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-34.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-33.0.0","date":"2025-04-29T13:10:12Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-33.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-32.0.1","date":"2025-03-19T16:07:37Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-32.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-31.0.2","date":"2025-03-19T16:07:28Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-31.0.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-32.0.0","date":"2025-02-13T08:00:18Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-32.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-31.0.1","date":"2024-12-25T05:42:25Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-31.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-31.0.0","date":"2024-10-22T18:15:53Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-31.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-30.0.1","date":"2024-09-17T17:10:51Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-30.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-30.0.0","date":"2024-06-17T03:03:30Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-30.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-29.0.1","date":"2024-04-03T05:02:18Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-29.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-29.0.0","date":"2024-02-21T05:51:52Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-29.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-28.0.1","date":"2023-12-21T11:24:37Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-28.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-28.0.0","date":"2023-11-15T10:19:54Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-28.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-27.0.0","date":"2023-08-11T09:28:58Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-27.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/druid/releases/tag/druid-26.0.0","date":"2023-05-24T00:40:26Z","type":"stable","version":"druid-26.0.0"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.6","date":"2026-09-28T13:35:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.5","date":"2026-07-22T10:51:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.4","date":"2026-06-17T10:45:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.5","date":"2026-06-17T10:42:38Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.3","date":"2026-05-20T11:50:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.2","date":"2026-04-13T10:46:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.1","date":"2026-03-23T12:10:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.5.0","date":"2026-03-09T12:40:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.4","date":"2026-01-26T12:08:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.3","date":"2025-12-09T10:20:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.2","date":"2025-11-12T13:04:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.1","date":"2025-10-07T10:29:57Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.4.0","date":"2025-09-16T10:17:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.3.2","date":"2025-07-08T10:39:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.3.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.3.1","date":"2025-06-16T13:54:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.3.0","date":"2025-05-21T16:04:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.2.2","date":"2025-04-08T08:44:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.2.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.2.1","date":"2025-03-05T18:03:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.2.0","date":"2025-02-05T13:57:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.1.3","date":"2024-11-04T13:59:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.1.3"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7.5 | - |
| security.trust_center | https://druid.apache.org/docs/latest/multi-stage-query/security | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.druid%3Adruid-processing&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=conda&package_name=python-duckdb&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Data Warehouse Software)

| Capability | Apache Druid | DuckDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Embedded |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | Separated storage/compute | - |
| Compute model | Clusters | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | Vendor-specific | Vendor-specific |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | - | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | - | Parquet, CSV, JSON, Iceberg, Delta Lake, Vortex, DuckLake, Lance, Arrow, Avro, E |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Concurrency scaling | - | - |
| **Ingestion** |  |  |
| Streaming ingest | ✓ | - |
| **Data model** |  |  |
| Semi-structured (JSON/VARIANT) | Functional | Functional |
| **Analytics** |  |  |
| ML / in-DB functions | - | ✓ |
| **Sharing** |  |  |
| Data sharing / marketplace | - | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:10:30.117Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*