# Databricks vs DuckDB

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** DuckDB

| Attribute | Databricks | DuckDB |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.9 (47% (low)) | 59.1 (51% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 42,154 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 15,285,415 |
| 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 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 | `{"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 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 | `{"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"}` | `{"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 | 14 | 27 |
| 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":"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 | - | C++ |
| license.spdx | - | MIT |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true,"android":true}` | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":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","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 | free | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | no | yes |
| release.cadence_days | - | 33 |
| release.history | - | `[{"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 | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| 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=conda&package_name=python-duckdb&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Data Warehouse Software)

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

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:15:37.416Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*