What is Starburst used for?

Starburst is a data lakehouse analytics platform built on Trino and Apache Iceberg that queries data across many systems without copying it. It is a good fit for querying data without building copy pipelines and lakehouse analytics on Iceberg tables.

Yes. Starburst has a free plan. Free forever for up to 3 clusters. Paid tiers are billed per compute credit: Pro from $0.50, Enterprise from $0.75 and Mission-Critical from $1.00. A 30-day free trial is offered.

Is Starburst open source?

No. Starburst is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Starburst include StarRocks, Trino and Apache Doris.

Can I self-host Starburst?

Yes. Although Starburst is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Starburst?

Starburst competes with Databricks, Snowflake and Amazon Athena. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Starburst alternatives.

Starburst: features, pricing and alternatives

About Starburst

Starburst is a data analytics platform built on the open-source Trino query engine and Apache Iceberg. Its pitch is that organizations can query data where it already lives, across data warehouses, data lakes, databases and streaming sources, instead of building pipelines to copy it.

The platform is described as five layers: ingest, maintain, federate, contextualize and ask. Ingestion lands data in Iceberg from Kafka or batch files such as CSV, JSON and Avro. Queries can span systems such as Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon S3 and Postgres in a single SQL statement. An AI layer called AIDA lets analysts and AI agents, including via MCP, ask questions of governed data.

Starburst runs in the cloud, on premises and in hybrid environments. It is a commercial product with a start-free option, a pricing page and a sales contact.

Key features

Federated SQL across many data sources
Built on Trino and Apache Iceberg
Ingestion from Kafka and batch files
AI layer for analysts and agents
Cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment

Good fit for

→Querying data without building copy pipelines
→Lakehouse analytics on Iceberg tables

Tags: trino; data-lakehouse; iceberg; data-federation; sql; analytics; hybrid

Starburst: questions and answers

What is Starburst used for?: Starburst is a data lakehouse analytics platform built on Trino and Apache Iceberg that queries data across many systems without copying it. It is a good fit for querying data without building copy pipelines and lakehouse analytics on Iceberg tables.
Is Starburst free?: Yes. Starburst has a free plan. Free forever for up to 3 clusters. Paid tiers are billed per compute credit: Pro from $0.50, Enterprise from $0.75 and Mission-Critical from $1.00. A 30-day free trial is offered.
Is Starburst open source?: No. Starburst is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Starburst include StarRocks, Trino and Apache Doris.
Can I self-host Starburst?: Yes. Although Starburst is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Starburst?: Starburst competes with Databricks, Snowflake and Amazon Athena. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Starburst alternatives.