# Databricks vs Delta Lake

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Delta Lake

| Attribute | Databricks | Delta Lake |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.9 (47% (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":"Databricks is a data lakehouse platform that merges data lake scalability with warehouse reliability and performance. It enables organizations to ingest, prepare, and analyze data while building AI applications with integrated governance and compliance. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/pricing","question":"What is Databricks?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Databricks offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans start at $0.07. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://databricks.com","question":"Is Databricks free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Databricks supports the web and Android. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/pricing","question":"What platforms does Databricks support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Databricks, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/session/creating-better-travel-experiences-all-confronting-airline-pricing","question":"Can Databricks be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 6 integrations for Databricks, including Teams, Slack, Confluence, Power Platform, Copilot Studio and Zerobus. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/pricing","question":"What does Databricks integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Databricks is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States.","source":"https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/session/creating-better-travel-experiences-all-confronting-airline-pricing","question":"Where is Databricks available?","confidence":0.75}]` | `[{"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}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | An integrated data and AI platform built on open formats that merges transactional reliability with analytics and machine learning capabilities, enabling organizations to manage data, models, and AI applications together without vendor lock-in. | 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 | `{"in_db_ml":true,"deployment":"managed","sql_dialect":"vendor","architecture":"separated","data_sharing":true,"compute_model":"serverless","license_class":"proprietary","table_formats":"Delta, Iceberg","semi_structured":"first_class","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 | 14 | 15 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Teams"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Confluence"},{"name":"Power Platform"},{"name":"Copilot Studio"},{"name":"Zerobus"},{"name":"Microsoft Power Platform","category":"integration_platform"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams","native":true,"category":"chat"},{"name":"Apache Spark","native":true},{"name":"MLflow","native":true},{"name":"Delta Lake","native":true},{"name":"Apache Iceberg","native":true},{"name":"Unity Catalog","native":true},{"name":"Lakeflow","native":true},{"name":"Databricks SQL","native":true},{"name":"Databricks Genie","native":true},{"name":"Lakebase","native":true},{"name":"dbt","native":false},{"name":"Trino","native":false},{"name":"LangChain","native":false},{"name":"PyTorch","native":false},{"name":"DSPy","native":false}]` | `[{"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":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true,"android":true}` | - |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Data Engineering","summary":"From $0.15 / DBU per second","features":["Orchestrate data processing","Build streaming and batch pipelines","Ingest data from multiple sources"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"DBU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.15,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Orchestrate data processing, machine learning and analytics pipelines","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Data Warehousing","summary":"From $0.22 / DBU per second","features":["SQL analytics","BI reporting","Available in Classic and Serverless compute"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"DBU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.22,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Run SQL queries for BI reporting, analytics and visualization","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Interactive Workloads","summary":"From $0.40 / DBU per second","features":["Data science workloads","Build custom applications","Security and governance"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"DBU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.4,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Run interactive data science and machine learning workloads","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Operational Database","summary":"From $0.069 / CU per second","features":["Postgres database","Data and feature serving"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"CU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.069,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Fully-managed Postgres transactional database for data and feature serving","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Artificial Intelligence","summary":"From $0.07 / DBU per second","features":["GenAI applications","Model Serving","AI Functions","Model Training"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"DBU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.07,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Build production-quality GenAI or ML applications","contactSales":false},{"free":true,"name":"Genie","summary":"From $0.07 / DBU beyond free usage","features":["Natural language Q&A","AI Coding Assistant","Enterprise Knowledge access"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"DBU"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.07,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"AI assistance for every team with natural language query access","contactSales":false}],"summary":"Pay-as-you-go usage-based pricing from $0.069 / DBU or CU per second. Committed Use Contracts available for volume discounts. Free tier available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://databricks.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T12:39:38.438Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.069,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}}` | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://delta.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T16:04:07.641Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | free | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | no | - |
| 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.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 6.2 |
| security.trust_center | https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/session/genie-zeroops-data-quality-and-compliance-scale | - |
| 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 | Databricks | Delta Lake |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Managed cloud | Self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | Separated storage/compute | Separated storage/compute |
| Compute model | Serverless | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | Vendor-specific | - |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | - | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | Delta, Iceberg | 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 | Proprietary | Permissive OSS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:59:01.008Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*