head to head · open source
duckdb vs trino
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars, 4,176 forks, 858 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trino has 13,405 stars, 3,850 forks, 2,764 open issues and last shipped yesterday. duckdb leads on adoption by 219% (42,747 vs 13,405 stars). duckdb is written in C++ under MIT; trino is written in Java under Apache-2.0. duckdb has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, trino 29%. duckdb was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (analytics, database), 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 | trino | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 trino if
- You want the trino feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and trino 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 trino
Trino is a fast distributed SQL query engine for big data analytics. See the User Manual for deployment instructions and end user documentation. Development See DEVELOPMENT for information about development and release process, code style and guidelines for implementors of Trino plugins. See CONTRIBUTING for contribution requirements. Security See the project security policy for information about reporting vulnerabilities. Trino supports reproducible builds as of version 449. Build requirements Mac OS X or Linux Note that some npm packages used to build the web UI are only available for x86 architectures, so if…
read the full trino overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is duckdb or trino more popular?
duckdb has 42,747 GitHub stars and trino has 13,405. duckdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are duckdb and trino free?
Both are open source. duckdb is licensed under MIT and trino under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between duckdb and trino?
duckdb is written in C++ and trino in Java. 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 trino?
Choose duckdb if you want the larger community (42,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose trino if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.