# Delta Lake vs DuckDB

| Attribute | Delta Lake | DuckDB |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 61 (58% (medium)) | 59.1 (51% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 152 | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | 9,042 | 42,154 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 6,751,062 | 15,285,415 |
| content.faq | `[{"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}]` | `[{"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 | 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. | 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","architecture":"separated","data_sharing":true,"license_class":"permissive","table_formats":"Delta, Iceberg, Hudi","semi_structured":"first_class","federation_query":true,"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 | 15 | 27 |
| 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"}]` | `[{"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 | Scala | C++ |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | - | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://delta.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T16:04:07.641Z"}` | `{"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 |
| release.cadence_days | 50 | 33 |
| 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"}]` | `[{"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 | 6.2 | - |
| 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}` | `{"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 | Delta Lake | DuckDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Embedded |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | Separated storage/compute | - |
| Compute model | - | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | - | Vendor-specific |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | Delta, Iceberg, Hudi | Parquet, CSV, JSON, Iceberg, Delta Lake, Vortex, DuckLake, Lance, Arrow, Avro, E |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Concurrency scaling | - | - |
| **Ingestion** |  |  |
| Streaming ingest | ✓ | - |
| **Data model** |  |  |
| Semi-structured (JSON/VARIANT) | First-class | Functional |
| **Analytics** |  |  |
| ML / in-DB functions | - | ✓ |
| **Sharing** |  |  |
| Data sharing / marketplace | ✓ | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-15T22:52:38.180Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*