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Trino

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by Trino Software Foundation · since 2019 · also known as PrestoSQL

Fast distributed SQL query engine for federated analytics across lakes and databases.

relationalcolumnar / olapdatabase engineopen source (permissive)mature
Website Docs Source★ 13.4K Compare Find similar

Overview

Trino is the open-source MPP SQL engine created by Presto's original authors when they forked PrestoSQL in 2019 (renamed in 2020). Like Presto it stores nothing itself: it queries Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi and Hive tables on object storage and federates over dozens of connectors, from PostgreSQL to Elasticsearch to Kafka. It has become the default open lakehouse query engine, with strong Iceberg support (DML, time travel, materialized views) and fault-tolerant execution for longer ETL. It needs a well-sized cluster and good file layout to perform; Starburst and Amazon Athena provide managed versions.

Analytics (OLAP)LakehouseData warehouse

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Best-in-class open engine for Iceberg, including DML and time travel
  • +Federates dozens of sources (Postgres, MySQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch) in one query
  • +Very active community with frequent releases
  • +Fault-tolerant execution makes it viable for ETL, not just interactive SQL
  • +Pluggable security: OAuth2, LDAP, Kerberos, OPA and Ranger access control

Trade-offs

  • −No storage of its own; results depend on file sizes, partitioning and stats
  • −Memory-hungry; large joins need careful cluster sizing
  • −Coordinator is a single point of failure without managed offerings
  • −Requires a very recent Java runtime and frequent upgrades to stay current

Great for

  • +Open lakehouse SQL on Iceberg/Delta
  • +Federated analytics across databases
  • +Interactive BI on object storage
  • +Data mesh query layer

Think twice for

  • −OLTP
  • −Sub-100 ms user-facing analytics
  • −Single-machine datasets

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 6 of 25 tracked

✓Joins
✓Geospatial
✓JSON
✓Materialized views
✓Role-based access
✓Time travel
–Transactions
–Secondary indexes
–Full-text search
–Vector search
–Change data capture
–Triggers
–Stored procedures
–TTL / expiry
–Pub/Sub
–Columnar storage
–In-memory
–Durable persistence
–Compression
–Encryption at rest
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Streaming ingest
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Massive · Multi-PB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Limited ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Distributed, Client server
Query languages
SQL (ANSI)

Scales by adding workers; fault-tolerant execution spools intermediate data for long queries.

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator
Starburst GalaxyStarburstAmazon AthenaAWSAmazon EMR (Trino)AWS

Ecosystem

apis & protocolsHTTP REST client protocol, JDBC
client languagesJava, Python, Go, JavaScript, Rust, C#
used byLinkedIn, Lyft, Netflix

Alternatives to Trino

Compare all→
PrestoRelational37.7

Distributed SQL query engine from Meta for interactive queries over data lakes and many sources.

trino vs presto →
StarburstRelational0.0

Commercial Trino platform: self-managed Starburst Enterprise and the Starburst Galaxy SaaS.

trino vs starburst →
Amazon AthenaRelational19.5

Serverless AWS query service running Trino-based SQL directly over data in S3.

trino vs amazon-athena →
Apache Spark SQLRelational50.3

Spark's SQL and DataFrame engine for large-scale batch, streaming and lakehouse processing.

trino vs apache-spark-sql →
DremioRelational12.7

Iceberg-native lakehouse query engine with reflections for acceleration, owned by SAP since 2026.

trino vs dremio →
Databricks SQLColumnar / OLAP20.8

Serverless SQL warehouses on the Databricks lakehouse, powered by the Photon C++ engine.

trino vs databricks-sql →

Trino FAQ

What is Trino?

Trino is a relational database by Trino Software Foundation, first released in 2019. Trino is the open-source MPP SQL engine created by Presto's original authors when they forked PrestoSQL in 2019 (renamed in 2020). Like Presto it stores nothing itself: it queries Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi and Hive tables on object storage and federates over dozens of connectors, from PostgreSQL to Elasticsearch to Kafka. It has become the default open lakehouse query engine, with strong Iceberg support (DML, time travel, materialized views) and fault-tolerant execution for longer ETL. It needs a well-sized cluster and good file layout to perform; Starburst and Amazon Athena provide managed versions.

Is Trino open source?

Yes. Trino is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.

Does Trino support ACID transactions?

Partly. Trino offers limited ACID guarantees (for example, single-record or single-partition transactions), with strong consistency.

Does Trino scale horizontally?

Trino scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at massive scale (Multi-PB).

How can I run Trino?

You can self-host it. Managed offerings include Starburst Galaxy, Amazon Athena and Amazon EMR (Trino).

What is Trino best for?

Trino is a strong fit for open lakehouse SQL on Iceberg/Delta, federated analytics across databases and interactive BI on object storage. Think twice for OLTP.

What are the best alternatives to Trino?

Common alternatives to Trino include Presto, Starburst, Amazon Athena, Apache Spark SQL and Dremio. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

How popular is Trino?

Trino ranks #27 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (49.9/100), and #9 among relational databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.