Apache Drill vs Trino
Apache Drill
drill.apache.orgTrino
trino.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache Drill | Trino |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Data Federation Software | 9.0 (#1) | 7.4 (#17) |
| Spec score · Query Engine Software | 8.9 (#2) | 7.4 (#17) |
| Spec score · Data Virtualization Software | 9.0 (#2) | 7.4 (#20) |
| Deployment | Drill can run embedded on a laptop or in distributed mode on a cluster of servers. | Trino can run on Kubernetes, in Docker containers, or through a manually deployed server tarball. |
| Security | Documented security features include Kerberos, username and password authentication, Digest authentication, authorization and user impersonation. | Trino supports TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, password-file, LDAP, Salesforce, OAuth 2.0, certificate, JWT, and Kerberos authentication, plus file-based, Open Policy Agent, and Ranger access control. |
| Support | The project directs questions to its drill-dev mailing list and welcomes contributions. | The project directs users to Slack for help and GitHub issues for bug reports. |
| What it does | Apache Drill is a schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL databases, and cloud storage. | Trino is a distributed SQL query engine for querying large datasets across heterogeneous data sources. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache Drill
Apache Drill is a schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL databases, and cloud storage. It can query raw data where it resides without first loading it, defining schemas, or transforming it. Its JSON data model supports complex and nested structures, and a single query can join data across multiple datastores. Listed sources include HBase, MongoDB, HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, Swift, NAS, and local files. JDBC and ODBC drivers connect Drill to tools including Tableau, Qlik, MicroStrategy, Spotfire, SAS, and Excel; developers can also use its REST API in custom applications. Drill can run embedded on a laptop or in distributed mode on a server cluster, and the homepage lists Mac, Windows, and Linux. Documented security options include Kerberos, username and password authentication, Digest, authorization, and impersonation. The software is free under Apache License 2.0. A compatibility limit: official support for Hadoop 2 and Java 8 was dropped with Drill 1.22.0.
Trino
Trino is a distributed SQL query engine for analytics across large datasets held in different systems. It supports ANSI SQL and can query multiple sources together, such as joining S3 object storage data with MySQL in one query. Its parallel, distributed design is intended for efficient, low-latency analytics and data warehousing, not general-purpose relational database use or OLTP workloads. Connectors cover systems including BigQuery, Cassandra, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, Snowflake, and SQL Server. Project-maintained client options include JDBC, Go, JavaScript, Python, and C#, alongside a command-line interface and Grafana data-source plugin. Trino runs in Kubernetes or Docker, or as a manually deployed server, and is optimized for cloud and on-premises environments including Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud. AI functions support OpenAI and Anthropic directly and other models through Ollama, with the language model supplied as an external service. Trino is free under the Apache License 2.0 as self-managed software. It supports multiple authentication and access-control options, but a default installation has no security features enabled.