# Apache Iceberg vs DuckDB

| Attribute | Apache Iceberg | DuckDB |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 62.2 (56% (medium)) | 62.4 (56% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 1 | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | 9,176 | 40,661 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 11,384,061 | 17,889,302 |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Apache Iceberg is a table format that enables reliable, ACID-compliant SQL operations on big data. It allows multiple query engines—such as Spark, Trino, Flink, Hive, and Impala—to safely read and write the same tables concurrently, bringing traditional database semantics to analytics workloads. | 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. |
| features.capabilities | `{"deployment":"embedded","data_sharing":true,"license_class":"permissive","table_formats":"Iceberg (Parquet, ORC, Avro, Puffin data files)","semi_structured":"first_class","federation_query":true,"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 | 20 | 27 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Spark"},{"name":"Trino"},{"name":"Presto"},{"name":"Flink"},{"name":"Hive"},{"name":"Impala"},{"name":"PyArrow"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"Polars"},{"name":"Pandas"},{"name":"Ray"},{"name":"Datafusion"},{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"SQLAlchemy"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"GCS"},{"name":"Azure Data Lake Storage"},{"name":"Hadoop"},{"name":"Kerberos"},{"name":"Thrift"}]` | `[{"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"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | C++ |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | - | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source, no licensing cost","sourceUrl":"https://iceberg.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T08:32:59.428Z"}` | `{"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 |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | - | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 50 | 28 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.11.0","date":"2026-05-20T08:47:57Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.2","date":"2026-05-18T21:58:12Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.1","date":"2025-12-22T22:04:42Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.10.0","date":"2025-09-11T15:08:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.2","date":"2025-07-18T13:44:58Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.1","date":"2025-05-28T16:52:05Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.9.0","date":"2025-04-28T06:27:16Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.2","date":"2025-03-19T10:12:37Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.8.1","date":"2025-02-28T07:52:17Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.8.0","date":"2025-02-13T09:13:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.1","date":"2024-12-06T20:01:03Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.7.0","date":"2024-11-08T15:12:01Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.6.1","date":"2024-08-27T17:47:30Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.6.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.6.0","date":"2024-07-23T12:06:44Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.2","date":"2024-05-16T07:50:32Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.1","date":"2024-04-30T12:43:30Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.5.0","date":"2024-03-11T11:00:15Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.4.3","date":"2023-12-27T17:15:46Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.4.2","date":"2023-11-07T16:44:26Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/iceberg/releases/tag/apache-iceberg-1.4.1","date":"2023-10-23T11:03:35Z","type":"stable","version":"apache-iceberg-1.4.1"}]` | `[{"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"},{"url":"https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/tag/v1.1.2","date":"2024-10-14T11:41:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.1.2"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 7.9 | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=apache-iceberg&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 | Apache Iceberg | DuckDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Embedded | Embedded |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Architecture | - | - |
| Compute model | - | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| SQL dialect | - | Vendor-specific |
| Federation / lakehouse query-in-place | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Interoperability** |  |  |
| Table-format support | Iceberg (Parquet, ORC, Avro, Puffin data files) | 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 | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:43:59.099Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*
