# Apache Iceberg vs Delta Lake

| Attribute | Apache Iceberg | Delta Lake |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 59.5 (56% (medium)) | 61 (58% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 1 | 152 |
| adoption.github_stars | 9,326 | 9,042 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 6,665,583 | 6,751,062 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Apache Iceberg is a table format that enables reliable, ACID-compliant SQL operations on big data. It allows multiple query engines—such as Spark, Trino, Flink, Hive, and Impala—to safely read and write the same tables concurrently, bringing traditional database semantics to analytics workloads. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://iceberg.apache.org","question":"What is Apache Iceberg?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Iceberg 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://iceberg.apache.org","question":"Is Apache Iceberg free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Iceberg can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://iceberg.apache.org","question":"Can Apache Iceberg be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 20 integrations for Apache Iceberg, including Spark, Trino, Presto, Flink, Hive, Impala, PyArrow and DuckDB, plus 12 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://iceberg.apache.org","question":"What does Apache Iceberg integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Iceberg 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/iceberg","question":"Is Apache Iceberg open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"An open-source storage framework enabling lakehouse architecture with support for multiple compute engines including Spark, Flink, Trino, Snowflake, BigQuery, and others. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://delta.io","question":"What is Delta Lake?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Delta Lake 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://delta.io","question":"Is Delta Lake free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Delta Lake can be deployed cloud / SaaS, on-premise and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://delta.io","question":"Can Delta Lake be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 29 integrations for Delta Lake, including Apache Spark, Apache Flink, Apache Hive, Apache Pulsar, Apache Druid, ClickHouse, Trino and PrestoDB, plus 21 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://delta.io","question":"What does Delta Lake integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Delta Lake 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/delta-io/delta","question":"Is Delta Lake open source?","confidence":0.99}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A table format that brings SQL capabilities to large-scale analytical datasets and enables multiple computing engines to safely and concurrently query and modify the same tables. | A storage framework enabling lakehouse architectures—unified platforms combining data warehouse and data lake capabilities—that works with multiple query engines and can be deployed on any cloud, on-premises, or locally. |
| features.capabilities | `{"deployment":"embedded","data_sharing":true,"license_class":"permissive","table_formats":"Iceberg (Parquet, ORC, Avro, Puffin data files)","semi_structured":"first_class","federation_query":true,"streaming_ingest":true,"concurrency_scaling":"automatic"}` | `{"deployment":"self","architecture":"separated","data_sharing":true,"license_class":"permissive","table_formats":"Delta, Iceberg, Hudi","semi_structured":"first_class","federation_query":true,"streaming_ingest":true}` |
| integrations.count | 20 | 15 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Spark"},{"name":"Trino"},{"name":"Presto"},{"name":"Flink"},{"name":"Hive"},{"name":"Impala"},{"name":"PyArrow"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"Polars"},{"name":"Pandas"},{"name":"Ray"},{"name":"Datafusion"},{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"SQLAlchemy"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"GCS"},{"name":"Azure Data Lake Storage"},{"name":"Hadoop"},{"name":"Kerberos"},{"name":"Thrift"},{"name":"Avro"},{"name":"Parquet"},{"name":"ORC"}]` | `[{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Apache Flink"},{"name":"Apache Hive"},{"name":"Apache Pulsar"},{"name":"Apache Druid"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"Trino"},{"name":"PrestoDB"},{"name":"StarRocks"},{"name":"RisingWave"},{"name":"Dagster"},{"name":"Hopsworks"},{"name":"MLflow"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"AWS Athena"},{"name":"AWS EMR"},{"name":"AWS Glue"},{"name":"Azure Stream Analytics"},{"name":"Google BigQuery"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"AWS Redshift"},{"name":"Microsoft Fabric"},{"name":"Power BI"},{"name":"Starburst"},{"name":"Oracle"},{"name":"Excel"},{"name":"FINOS Legend"},{"name":"Kotosiro"},{"name":"Apache Kafka","native":true},{"name":"Amazon Athena"},{"name":"Amazon Redshift"},{"name":"Azure Fabric"},{"name":"Apache Iceberg"},{"name":"Apache Hudi"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | Scala |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | - |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source, no licensing cost","sourceUrl":"https://iceberg.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T08:32:59.428Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://delta.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T16:04:07.641Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| release.cadence_days | 50 | 50 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.12.0","date":"2026-09-30T01:52:18Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.12.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.11.0","date":"2026-05-20T08:47:57Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.2","date":"2026-05-18T21:58:12Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.1","date":"2025-12-22T22:04:42Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.0","date":"2025-09-11T15:08:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.2","date":"2025-07-18T13:44:58Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.1","date":"2025-05-28T16:52:05Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.0","date":"2025-04-28T06:27:16Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.2","date":"2025-03-19T10:12:37Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.8.1","date":"2025-02-28T07:52:17Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.8.0","date":"2025-02-13T09:13:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.1","date":"2024-12-06T20:01:03Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.0","date":"2024-11-08T15:12:01Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.6.1","date":"2024-08-27T17:47:30Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.6.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.6.0","date":"2024-07-23T12:06:44Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.2","date":"2024-05-16T07:50:32Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.1","date":"2024-04-30T12:43:30Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.0","date":"2024-03-11T11:00:15Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.4.3","date":"2023-12-27T17:15:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.4.2","date":"2023-11-07T16:44:26Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.4.2"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.4.1","date":"2026-10-05T23:25:36Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.4.0","date":"2026-08-20T16:52:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.3.3","date":"2026-08-12T21:01:45Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.3.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.3.1","date":"2026-07-08T04:59:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.3.0","date":"2026-06-18T04:26:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.2.0","date":"2026-04-16T05:00:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.1.0","date":"2026-02-26T02:42:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.0.1","date":"2026-01-16T00:40:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.0.0","date":"2025-06-09T16:22:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.3.2","date":"2025-05-31T00:20:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.3.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.3.1","date":"2025-05-05T03:21:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.3.0","date":"2025-01-06T22:04:57Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.2.1","date":"2024-09-26T21:00:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v4.0.0rc1","date":"2024-06-13T16:28:01Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v4.0.0rc1"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.2.0","date":"2024-05-09T19:55:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.1.0","date":"2024-01-30T22:13:52Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v3.0.0","date":"2023-10-17T23:04:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v2.4.0","date":"2023-05-25T22:10:14Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v2.3.0","date":"2023-04-05T18:42:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/delta-io/delta/releases/tag/v2.0.2","date":"2023-01-13T22:44:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0.2"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 7.9 | 6.2 |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=apache-iceberg&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=io.delta%3Adelta-standalone_2.12&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Data Warehouse Software)

| Capability | Apache Iceberg | Delta Lake |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Embedded | Self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | - | Separated storage/compute |
| Compute model | - | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | - | - |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | Iceberg (Parquet, ORC, Avro, Puffin data files) | Delta, Iceberg, Hudi |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Concurrency scaling | Automatic | - |
| **Ingestion** |  |  |
| Streaming ingest | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Data model** |  |  |
| Semi-structured (JSON/VARIANT) | First-class | First-class |
| **Analytics** |  |  |
| ML / in-DB functions | - | - |
| **Sharing** |  |  |
| Data sharing / marketplace | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:59:42.228Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*