# Azure Synapse Analytics vs Delta Lake

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Delta Lake

| Attribute | Azure Synapse Analytics | Delta Lake |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 50.7 (24% (low)) | 61 (58% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 152 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 9,042 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 6,751,062 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Azure Synapse Analytics integrates enterprise data warehousing and large-scale data analytics into a single platform, enabling faster analysis and insights across organizational datasets It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/offers/savings-plans/","question":"What is Azure Synapse Analytics?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Azure Synapse Analytics. 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://azure.microsoft.com/acom/etc.clientlibs/onecloud/components/content/reimagine/atomic/carousel/v1/carousel/clientlibs/pricing-styles.ACSHASHbcdafd3e07059ae596973551430292fc.min.css","question":"What platforms does Azure Synapse Analytics support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Azure Synapse Analytics, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://azure.microsoft.com/acom/etc.clientlibs/onecloud/components/content/reimagine/atomic/carousel/v1/carousel/clientlibs/pricing-styles.ACSHASHbcdafd3e07059ae596973551430292fc.min.css","question":"Can Azure Synapse Analytics be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for Azure Synapse Analytics. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Azure Synapse Analytics not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/trusted-cloud/","question":"What security certifications does Azure Synapse Analytics have?","confidence":0.7}]` | `[{"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 | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Azure Synapse Analytics integrates enterprise data warehousing and large-scale data analytics into a single platform, enabling faster analysis and insights across organizational datasets | 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":"managed","license_class":"proprietary"}` | `{"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 | - | 15 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"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 | - | Scala |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | - |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","summary":"Pay-as-you-go consumption model with 3-year savings plans available","currency":"USD","sourceUrl":"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-05T11:10:12.725Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://delta.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T16:04:07.641Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | unknown | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | - | 50 |
| release.history | - | `[{"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.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 6.2 |
| security.trust_center | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/security/ | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | - | `{"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 | Azure Synapse Analytics | Delta Lake |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Managed cloud | Self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | - | Separated storage/compute |
| Compute model | - | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | - | - |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | - | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | - | Delta, Iceberg, Hudi |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Concurrency scaling | - | - |
| **Ingestion** |  |  |
| Streaming ingest | - | ✓ |
| **Data model** |  |  |
| Semi-structured (JSON/VARIANT) | - | First-class |
| **Analytics** |  |  |
| ML / in-DB functions | - | - |
| **Sharing** |  |  |
| Data sharing / marketplace | - | ✓ |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Proprietary | Permissive OSS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:06:11.422Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*