head to head · open source
duckdb vs delta
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars, 4,176 forks, 858 open issues and last shipped yesterday. delta has 9,065 stars, 2,206 forks, 955 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckdb leads on adoption by 372% (42,747 vs 9,065 stars). duckdb is written in C++ under MIT; delta is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. duckdb has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, delta 24%. duckdb was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (analytics), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| duckdb | delta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 9.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick duckdb if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick delta if
- You want the delta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and delta fits your workflow better
About duckdb
DuckDB DuckDB is a high performance analytical database system. It is designed to be fast, reliable, portable, and easy to use. DuckDB provides a rich SQL dialect with support far beyond basic SQL. DuckDB supports arbitrary and nested correlated subqueries, window functions, collations, complex types (arrays, structs, maps), and several extensions designed to make SQL easier to use. DuckDB is available as a standalone CLI application and has clients for Python, R, Java, Wasm, etc., with deep integrations with packages such as pandas and dplyr. For more information on using DuckDB, please refer to the DuckDB…
read the full duckdb overview →
About delta
Delta Lake is an open source storage framework that enables building a Lakehouse architecture with compute engines including Spark, PrestoDB, Flink, Trino, and Hive and APIs for Scala, Java, Rust, Ruby, and Python. See the Delta Lake Documentation for details. See the Quick Start Guide to get started with Scala, Java and Python. Note, this repo is one of many Delta Lake repositories in the delta.io organizations including delta, delta rs, delta sharing, kafka delta ingest, and website. The following are some of the more popular Delta Lake integrations, refer to delta.io/integrations for the complete list: Apache…
read the full delta overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is duckdb or delta more popular?
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars and delta has 9,065. duckdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are duckdb and delta free?
Both are open source. duckdb is licensed under MIT and delta under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between duckdb and delta?
duckdb is written in C++ and delta in Scala. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, duckdb or delta?
Choose duckdb if you want the larger community (42,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose delta if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.