Exasol vs Firebolt
Exasol
exasol.com
Firebolt
firebolt.ioSide by side
| Figure | Exasol | Firebolt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $3.30/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 18 | 1 |
| Spec score · Analytics Databases | 9.2 (#1) | 8.0 (#13) |
| Spec score · Analytics Data | 9.2 (#1) | 8.0 (#15) |
| Spec score · OLAP Software | 9.1 (#2) | 7.9 (#18) |
| Spec score · OLAP Databases | 9.1 (#2) | 7.9 (#14) |
| Spec score · Big Data Analytics Software | 9.0 (#3) | 7.8 (#19) |
| Spec score · Analytical Data Store Software | 9.1 (#3) | 7.9 (#14) |
| Spec score · Data Warehouse Software | 9.2 (#3) | 8.0 (#8) |
| Spec score · Columnar Databases | 9.1 (#5) | 7.9 (#13) |
| Deployment | Exasol lists on-premises, hybrid, and fully managed SaaS deployment options; on-premises environments can include air-gapped setups. | It runs as a single binary on a laptop or as a cluster of hundreds of nodes in your own cloud. |
| Founded | 2000 | 2019 |
| Integrations | Official ecosystem documentation lists BI integrations including Power BI, Tableau, Looker, Qlik Sense, SAS, Superset, Yellowfin and Amazon QuickSight. | It integrates with Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Postgres-compatible tools, Go, JDBC, .NET, Node.js, Python, Rust, SQLAlchemy, and REST API clients. |
| Notable limits | The free Community Edition is limited to 200GB of data, while Exasol Personal is licensed for a single user and allows up to two connected data sources. | The native dbt adapter supports dbt Core only, Airflow 3.x is not supported, and Delta Lake is not natively supported. |
| Performance | The company says automatic self-indexing helps tune database performance. | Firebolt is designed for sub-second query latency and low-latency, high-concurrency analytics. |
| Product | Exasol describes itself as a sovereign analytics database for high-concurrency AI and analytics workloads. | Firebolt is a high-performance, open-source analytical database for engineers with Postgres-compatible SQL. |
| Security | Exasol states that it is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and describes controls including access control and incident response processes. | Firebolt lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27018, HIPAA support, GDPR alignment, MFA, RBAC, and encryption in transit and at rest. |
| Support | Exasol’s support page lists 24/7 incident troubleshooting and monitoring, plus performance analysis, maintenance, and planning assistance. | The pricing page lists audit logs, metrics, and support as managed-service capabilities. |
Plans
Exasol
- XS$3.30 a month
- S$6.60 a month
- M$13.20 a month
- L$26.40 a month
- XL$52.80 a month
- 2XL$105.60 a month
- 3XL$158.40 a month
- Storage$25 a month
- Exasol Community EditionFree
- Exasol PersonalFree
In their own words
Exasol
Exasol is a database for analytics and high-concurrency AI workloads, available in cloud, on-premises, hybrid, and fully managed SaaS deployments. The company says teams can analyze billions of rows in seconds and that automatic self-indexing helps tune performance. SaaS includes five databases, multi-cluster support, basic UDF support, advanced in-database analytics, and data virtualization. Teams can scale vertically or add clusters with dedicated compute for work such as data ingest or machine learning. The 30-day SaaS trial includes $200 of usage and requires no credit card. Pay-as-you-go compute is billed hourly; XS is $3.30 a month and S is $6.60 a month, while storage is listed separately at $25 a month. Free options include Exasol Personal, licensed for a single user and up to two connected data sources, and Community Edition, limited to 200GB of data. Exasol lists integrations including Airbyte, Alation, Amazon QuickSight, Apache Airflow, and Apache Superset. Its documentation covers multiple authentication methods and TLS encryption for database connections; encryption at rest must be configured on the supplied file systems and devices.
Firebolt
Firebolt is an open-source analytical database for engineers, with Postgres-compatible SQL and options for self-managed or managed deployment. It can run as a single binary on a laptop or scale to a cluster of hundreds of nodes in a customer’s cloud. Firebolt is designed for sub-second query latency and high-concurrency analytics, and supports Apache Iceberg and DuckLake using open storage standards. Deployment choices include a single binary, Helm chart, Kubernetes Operator, and managed service. Firebolt Core is free forever for self-hosted use, with no usage limits; it cannot be used to build a hosted SaaS that competes with Firebolt’s managed service. Managed compute is billed per second, with scale-to-zero, automatic start and stop, and autoscaling. Object storage is pass-through at $0.0264 / GB·mo, and the managed service includes $200 free credits. AI capabilities include query and embedding functions, vector search, an MCP Server, and a preview agent. Self-managed availability includes AWS and GCP, with Azure in preview; the managed service is currently AWS-only.