# Delta Lake vs Snowflake

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Snowflake

| Attribute | Delta Lake | Snowflake |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 61 (58% (medium)) | 68.1 (63% (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":"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":"A fully managed cloud service that unifies data management and analytics across cloud providers, with native support for AI/ML workloads, zero-copy data sharing, and automatic scaling. It is indexed under Data Warehouse Software.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","question":"What is Snowflake?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Snowflake is sold across 3 plans: Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical. We have not confirmed a published price for every tier. There is no free tier. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","question":"How much does Snowflake cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Snowflake supports the web, Windows, macOS and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","question":"What platforms does Snowflake support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Snowflake, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","question":"Can Snowflake be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 9 integrations for Snowflake, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Streamlit, Apache Iceberg, PyTorch, NVIDIA and Jira, plus 1 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","question":"What does Snowflake integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR for Snowflake. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Snowflake not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.snowflake.com/security","question":"What security certifications does Snowflake have?","confidence":0.7}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":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. | Snowflake is a fully managed cloud service that unifies data storage, analytics, machine learning and AI capabilities in a single platform. It enables organizations to process structured and unstructured data, build AI applications and share live data across organizations and cloud environments. |
| 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}` | `{"hosting":"cloud","in_db_ml":true,"data_model":"relational","deployment":"managed","sql_support":true,"data_sharing":true,"compute_model":"virtual_warehouse","license_class":"proprietary","managed_cloud":true,"table_formats":"Apache Iceberg","semi_structured":"first_class","federation_query":true,"streaming_ingest":true,"acid_transactions":true,"horizontal_scaling":true,"concurrency_scaling":"automatic"}` |
| integrations.count | 15 | 750 |
| 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":"AWS"},{"name":"Microsoft Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud Platform"},{"name":"Streamlit"},{"name":"Apache Iceberg"},{"name":"PyTorch"},{"name":"NVIDIA"},{"name":"Jira","native":true,"category":"development","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"GitHub","native":true,"category":"development","direction":"bidirectional"}]` |
| 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":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://delta.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T16:04:07.641Z"}` | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Standard","description":"Entry-level offering providing access to core platform functionality","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","description":"For high-growth and large-scale customers with multi-cluster compute, governance and extended data retention","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Business Critical","description":"For highly regulated industries requiring advanced security and compliance capabilities","contactSales":true}],"currency":"USD","sourceUrl":"https://www.snowflake.com/en/pricing-options/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-05T12:39:26.501Z","billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | no |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | unknown |
| 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.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.fedramp | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.iso27001 | - | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 6.2 | - |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| 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 | Delta Lake | Snowflake |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Managed cloud |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | Separated storage/compute | - |
| Compute model | - | Virtual warehouses |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | - | - |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | Delta, Iceberg, Hudi | Apache Iceberg |
| **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 | Proprietary |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T21:27:09.903Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*