Apache Hive vs Apache Impala
Apache Hive
hive.apache.orgApache Impala
impala.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Apache Hive | Apache Impala |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Query Engine Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.2 (#8) |
| Spec score · Analytics Databases | 9.0 (#4) | 8.2 (#10) |
| Spec score · Big Data Analytics Software | 8.9 (#4) | 8.1 (#11) |
| Spec score · OLAP Databases | 8.9 (#5) | 8.2 (#9) |
| Iceberg integration | Hive Iceberg tables support Parquet, ORC and Avro file formats and both Iceberg table format versions 1 and 2. | Impala can add existing Iceberg tables to the Hive Metastore with CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE and interact with them. |
| Security | The site describes Kerberos authentication, fine-grained access control, and audit logging; HiveServer2 documentation also lists LDAP, PAM, and custom authentication options. | Impala integrates Kerberos authentication with Apache Ranger fine-grained authorization and provides auditing capabilities. |
| Storage systems | Hive can access data in HDFS and HBase as well as other distributed storage systems. | Impala supports data in HDFS, HBase, and Amazon S3. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache Hive
Apache Hive is a distributed data warehouse system for reading, writing, and managing large datasets with SQL. Its Metastore keeps shared metadata for tables and partitions and serves clients including Hive, Impala, and Spark; HiveServer2 supports concurrent clients through JDBC and ODBC. Hive provides full ACID transactions for ORC tables and insert-only transactions for other formats. Documented storage options include S3, Azure Data Lake, and Google Cloud Storage, and Hive supports Apache Iceberg tables through a StorageHandler. Named integrations include Spark, Presto, and Impala, with Apache Ranger for authorization and Apache Atlas for lineage and governance. Security options described by the project include Kerberos, fine-grained access control, and audit logging; HiveServer2 also lists LDAP, PAM, and custom authentication. The quickstart includes Docker instructions for the server and Metastore. Hive is free open-source software. The installation manual lists Java 8, Maven 3.6.3, Protobuf 2.5, Hadoop 3.3.6, and Tez among current prerequisites; Hive 4.2.x instead requires JDK 21 minimum and works with Hadoop 3.4.1 and Tez 0.10.5.
Apache Impala
Apache Impala is a free, open-source native analytic database for SQL queries on open data and table formats. It targets low-latency, high-concurrency business intelligence and analytics in Hadoop environments and is described as scaling linearly, including for multitenant use. Impala works with HDFS, HBase and Amazon S3, plus Apache Kudu, Apache Iceberg and other listed sources. Supported formats include delimited text, Parquet, Avro, SequenceFile and RCFile, with Snappy, GZIP, Deflate and BZIP codecs. Clients can connect through impala-shell, Hue, JDBC or ODBC. The system reuses Hadoop file formats, metadata, security and resource-management frameworks, and shares metadata and an ODBC driver with Apache Hive. Kudu tables support queries and efficient updates or deletes; Iceberg tables can be registered with the Hive Metastore. Kerberos, Apache Ranger authorization, auditing and encrypted JDBC or ODBC connections are supported. Impala runs on Linux and macOS, supports API use and self-hosted deployment, and is licensed under Apache License 2.0.