About Apache Cloudberry
Apache Cloudberry, currently in the Apache incubator, is an open-source massively parallel processing database. It was created by original developers of Greenplum Database and evolves from the open-source version of Pivotal Greenplum, but uses a newer PostgreSQL kernel and adds enterprise capabilities. It is described as an open-source alternative to Greenplum Database.
It can serve as a data warehouse and is also intended for large-scale analytics and AI or machine learning workloads, distributing queries across many nodes. Because it is based on PostgreSQL, it uses familiar SQL. The main repository sits alongside ecosystem repositories for the website, a backup utility, Go libraries and the Platform Extension Framework (PXF) for connecting to external data.
Cloudberry is written in C and licensed under Apache-2.0. You can build it from source on Linux, including RHEL, Rocky Linux and Ubuntu, and macOS, or try it quickly through a Docker-based sandbox. Community help is available through Slack and GitHub Discussions. It suits data engineering teams running large analytical workloads that want an open-source MPP engine they can operate themselves.
Key features
- Massively parallel processing SQL engine
- PostgreSQL-based kernel
- Data warehouse and analytics workloads
- Backup utility and PXF connectors
- Docker sandbox for trying it out
- Builds on Linux and macOS
Good fit for
- →Replacing Greenplum with an open-source MPP database
- →Running large-scale analytical SQL
- →Building a self-managed data warehouse
- Tags
- mpp
- data-warehouse
- postgresql
- olap
- analytics
- greenplum
- apache
- distributed-database
- sql
Apache Cloudberry: questions and answers
- What is Apache Cloudberry used for?
- Apache Cloudberry is an open-source MPP database based on PostgreSQL for data warehousing and large-scale analytics, positioned as a Greenplum alternative. It is a good fit for replacing Greenplum with an open-source MPP database, running large-scale analytical SQL and building a self-managed data warehouse.
- Is Apache Cloudberry open source?
- Yes. Apache Cloudberry is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at apache/cloudberry and is written mainly in C.
- Is Apache Cloudberry free?
- Yes. Apache Cloudberry is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Apache Cloudberry?
- Yes. Apache Cloudberry can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Apache Cloudberry an alternative to?
- Apache Cloudberry is an open-source alternative to Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Databricks and Amazon Redshift. Other open-source alternatives to Snowflake include Apache Doris, StarRocks and Databend.
- Is Apache Cloudberry actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Apache Cloudberry was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 2.1.0-incubating, published on 15 April 2026. The project has 1.4k stars on GitHub.
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