Starburst Enterprise Context Layer vs Trino
Starburst Enterprise Context Layer
starburst.ioTrino
trino.ioSide by side
| Figure | Starburst Enterprise Context Layer | Trino |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 1 |
| Spec score · Query Engine Software | 8.5 (#5) | 7.4 (#17) |
| Spec score · Big Data Analytics Software | 8.5 (#9) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Deployment | Starburst Enterprise is self-hosted and can run on premises, in private or hybrid clouds, Kubernetes and major cloud marketplaces. | Trino can run on Kubernetes, in Docker containers, or through a manually deployed server tarball. |
| Integrations | The platform connects to more than 50 sources, including Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hive, Amazon S3, Snowflake, and PostgreSQL. | Trino provides connectors for data sources including BigQuery, Cassandra, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, Snowflake, and SQL Server. |
| Security | Enterprise security includes column- and row-level RBAC and ABAC, Apache Ranger, HashiCorp Vault, Okta, LDAP, dynamic masking, column-level encryption, and unified audit logging. | 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 | Enterprise support tiers range from five portal tickets monthly to unlimited tickets and dedicated experts; Sev-1 response targets range from one hour to 30 minutes. | The project directs users to Slack for help and GitHub issues for bug reports. |
| What it does | The Enterprise Context Layer packages scattered data into governed, versioned data products containing business definitions, access policy and lineage for analysts, applications and AI. | Trino is a distributed SQL query engine for querying large datasets across heterogeneous data sources. |
Plans
Starburst Enterprise Context Layer
- FreeFree
- ProPriced on request
- Pro$0.50 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Enterprise$0.75 a month
- Mission-CriticalPriced on request
- Mission-Critical$1 a month
In their own words
Starburst Enterprise Context Layer
Starburst Enterprise Context Layer turns scattered data into governed, versioned Data Products. Each product combines a dataset with business definitions, ownership, access policies, and lineage, and appears in a shared catalog. Controls include role-based access, column masking, and row-level security. Teams can define products in YAML, commit them to git, test changes before merging, and roll back; breaking changes are reviewed before rollout. Automated CI/CD lineage checks verify upstream freshness before a new version is published. A semantic layer turns raw data into business-ready metrics, dimensions, and relationships for BI tools and AI agents. Products can be consumed through JDBC or REST, and the platform connects to more than 50 sources, including Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hive, Amazon S3, Snowflake, and PostgreSQL. It runs in private cloud, hybrid, or on-premises environments and is air-gap ready. The free plan is free. Pro costs what you agree with the maker, billed /credit; Enterprise costs what you agree with the maker, billed /credit; Mission-Critical costs what you agree with the maker, billed /credit.
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.