Firebolt vs Trino
Firebolt
firebolt.ioTrino
trino.ioSide by side
| Figure | Firebolt | Trino |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Analytics Databases | 8.0 (#13) | 7.4 (#21) |
| Spec score · Query Engine Software | 7.9 (#12) | 7.4 (#17) |
| Spec score · OLAP Databases | 7.9 (#14) | 7.4 (#20) |
| Spec score · Analytics Data | 8.0 (#15) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Spec score · Big Data Analytics Software | 7.8 (#19) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Deployment | It runs as a single binary on a laptop or as a cluster of hundreds of nodes in your own cloud. | Trino can run on Kubernetes, in Docker containers, or through a manually deployed server tarball. |
| Integrations | It integrates with Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Postgres-compatible tools, Go, JDBC, .NET, Node.js, Python, Rust, SQLAlchemy, and REST API clients. | Trino provides connectors for data sources including BigQuery, Cassandra, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, Snowflake, and SQL Server. |
| Performance | Firebolt is designed for sub-second query latency and low-latency, high-concurrency analytics. | Trino is highly parallel and distributed and is built for efficient, low-latency analytics. |
| Security | Firebolt lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27018, HIPAA support, GDPR alignment, MFA, RBAC, and encryption in transit and at rest. | 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 pricing page lists audit logs, metrics, and support as managed-service capabilities. | The project directs users to Slack for help and GitHub issues for bug reports. |
Plans
In their own words
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.
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.