Apache Hudi vs Starburst Galaxy

Apache Hudi is a free, open-source data lakehouse platform that adds database capabilities to data lakes and supports incremental processing for low-latency analytics. It can update and delete records, with pluggable indexing for change-data-capture and streaming workloads. Transaction features include atomic writes, snapshot isolation, and non-blocking concurrency controls. Users can query historical table versions, roll back changes, and review commit history. Automated table services handle clustering, compaction, cleaning, file sizing, and indexing, while schema evolution and enforcement accommodate changing data. Listed integrations include Apache Spark, Apache Flink, Kafka, Debezium, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, Trino, and dbt. Some integrations are read-only, so Spark or Flink may write Hudi tables for those systems to query. Downloads include source releases and Maven bundles, with PGP verification advised. Hudi relies on the security posture of its compute and storage environment.

Starburst Galaxy is a managed cloud analytics platform built on Trino. It lets teams query data across sources in one SQL query without copying it, with availability on AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Starburst lists more than 50 data sources, including Amazon S3, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery and Azure Blob. Galaxy can stream from Kafka or load CSV, JSON and AVRO files into Iceberg. Its LakeOps service automates Iceberg table compaction, snapshot expiry and orphan-file removal; AIDA converts natural-language questions into governed insights through a customizable interface or MCP. Security provisions include fine-grained RBAC and ABAC, encryption, data classification and private connectivity. Starburst describes Galaxy as SOC 2 Type II certified and HIPAA-ready. A free plan allows up to three clusters for ad hoc queries in standard execution mode. Usage charges vary by plan and cover items such as compute, ingestion and private-link data transfer. A 30-day trial includes Enterprise features and $500 in compute resources. Starburst recommends Galaxy for organizations without resources to manage complex data clusters.