List of the Top 10 Query Engines for Unity Catalog in 2025

BigQuery boasts an exceptionally efficient query engine capable of executing large-scale queries on extensive datasets with impressive speed. Its serverless model empowers organizations to carry out high-performance queries without the burden of maintaining infrastructure or servers. The SQL-based query interface is user-friendly for most data analysts, facilitating a smooth entry into intricate data analysis tasks. New users can take advantage of $300 in complimentary credits to explore the capabilities of the query engine, allowing them to execute a range of queries and evaluate how BigQuery meets their analytical requirements. Additionally, the platform is built for scalability, ensuring that query performance stays reliable as data volumes increase.

Snowflake is a comprehensive, cloud-based data platform designed to simplify data management, storage, and analytics for businesses of all sizes. With a unique architecture that separates storage and compute resources, Snowflake offers users the ability to scale both independently based on workload demands. The platform supports real-time analytics, data sharing, and integration with a wide range of third-party tools, allowing businesses to gain actionable insights from their data quickly. Snowflake's advanced security features, including automatic encryption and multi-cloud capabilities, ensure that data is both protected and easily accessible. Snowflake is ideal for companies seeking to modernize their data architecture, enabling seamless collaboration across departments and improving decision-making processes.

Trino is an exceptionally swift query engine engineered for remarkable performance. This high-efficiency, distributed SQL query engine is specifically designed for big data analytics, allowing users to explore their extensive data landscapes. Built for peak efficiency, Trino shines in low-latency analytics and is widely adopted by some of the biggest companies worldwide to execute queries on exabyte-scale data lakes and massive data warehouses. It supports various use cases, such as interactive ad-hoc analytics, long-running batch queries that can extend for hours, and high-throughput applications that demand quick sub-second query responses. Complying with ANSI SQL standards, Trino is compatible with well-known business intelligence tools like R, Tableau, Power BI, and Superset. Additionally, it enables users to query data directly from diverse sources, including Hadoop, S3, Cassandra, and MySQL, thereby removing the burdensome, slow, and error-prone processes related to data copying. This feature allows users to efficiently access and analyze data from different systems within a single query. Consequently, Trino's flexibility and power position it as an invaluable tool in the current data-driven era, driving innovation and efficiency across industries.

PuppyGraph enables users to seamlessly query one or more data sources through an integrated graph model. Unlike traditional graph databases, which can be expensive, require significant setup time, and demand a specialized team for upkeep, PuppyGraph streamlines the process. Many conventional systems can take hours to run multi-hop queries and struggle with managing datasets exceeding 100GB. Utilizing a separate graph database can complicate your architecture due to fragile ETL processes, which can ultimately raise the total cost of ownership (TCO). PuppyGraph, however, allows you to connect to any data source, irrespective of its location, facilitating cross-cloud and cross-region graph analytics without the need for cumbersome ETLs or data duplication. By directly integrating with your data warehouses and lakes, PuppyGraph empowers you to query your data as a graph while eliminating the hassle of building and maintaining extensive ETL pipelines commonly associated with traditional graph configurations. You can say goodbye to the delays in data access and the unreliability of ETL operations. Furthermore, PuppyGraph addresses scalability issues linked to graphs by separating computation from storage, which enhances efficient data management. Overall, this innovative solution not only boosts performance but also simplifies your overall data strategy, making it a valuable asset for any organization.

No matter if your project consists of a single table or multiple tables, StarRocks promises a remarkable performance boost of no less than 300% when stacked against other commonly used solutions. Its extensive range of connectors allows for the smooth ingestion of streaming data, capturing information in real-time and guaranteeing that you have the most current insights at your fingertips. Designed specifically for your unique use cases, the query engine enables flexible analytics without the hassle of moving data or altering SQL queries, which simplifies the scaling of your analytics capabilities as needed. Moreover, StarRocks not only accelerates the journey from data to actionable insights but also excels with its unparalleled performance, providing a comprehensive OLAP solution that meets the most common data analytics demands. Its sophisticated caching system, leveraging both memory and disk, is specifically engineered to minimize the I/O overhead linked with data retrieval from external storage, which leads to significant enhancements in query performance while ensuring overall efficiency. Furthermore, this distinctive combination of features empowers users to fully harness the potential of their data, all while avoiding unnecessary delays in their analytic processes. Ultimately, StarRocks represents a pivotal tool for those seeking to optimize their data analysis and operational productivity.

Starburst enables organizations to strengthen their decision-making processes by granting quick access to all their data without the complications associated with transferring or duplicating it. As businesses gather extensive data, their analysis teams frequently experience delays due to waiting for access to necessary information for evaluations. By allowing teams to connect directly to data at its origin, Starburst guarantees they can swiftly and accurately analyze larger datasets without the complications of data movement. The Starburst Enterprise version offers a comprehensive, enterprise-level solution built on the open-source Trino (previously known as Presto® SQL), which comes with full support and is rigorously tested for production environments. This offering not only enhances performance and security but also streamlines the deployment, connection, and management of a Trino setup. By facilitating connections to any data source—whether located on-premises, in the cloud, or within a hybrid cloud framework—Starburst empowers teams to use their favored analytics tools while effortlessly accessing data from diverse locations. This groundbreaking strategy significantly accelerates the time it takes to derive insights, which is crucial for businesses striving to remain competitive in a data-centric landscape. Furthermore, with the constant evolution of data needs, Starburst adapts to provide ongoing support and innovation, ensuring that organizations can continuously optimize their data strategies.

The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform empowers every individual within your organization to effectively utilize data and artificial intelligence. Built on a lakehouse architecture, it creates a unified and transparent foundation for comprehensive data management and governance, further enhanced by a Data Intelligence Engine that identifies the unique attributes of your data. Organizations that thrive across various industries will be those that effectively harness the potential of data and AI. Spanning a wide range of functions from ETL processes to data warehousing and generative AI, Databricks simplifies and accelerates the achievement of your data and AI aspirations. By integrating generative AI with the synergistic benefits of a lakehouse, Databricks energizes a Data Intelligence Engine that understands the specific semantics of your data. This capability allows the platform to automatically optimize performance and manage infrastructure in a way that is customized to the requirements of your organization. Moreover, the Data Intelligence Engine is designed to recognize the unique terminology of your business, making the search and exploration of new data as easy as asking a question to a peer, thereby enhancing collaboration and efficiency. This progressive approach not only reshapes how organizations engage with their data but also cultivates a culture of informed decision-making and deeper insights, ultimately leading to sustained competitive advantages.

Apache Spark™ is a powerful analytics platform crafted for large-scale data processing endeavors. It excels in both batch and streaming tasks by employing an advanced Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) scheduler, a highly effective query optimizer, and a streamlined physical execution engine. With more than 80 high-level operators at its disposal, Spark greatly facilitates the creation of parallel applications. Users can engage with the framework through a variety of shells, including Scala, Python, R, and SQL. Spark also boasts a rich ecosystem of libraries—such as SQL and DataFrames, MLlib for machine learning, GraphX for graph analysis, and Spark Streaming for processing real-time data—which can be effortlessly woven together in a single application. This platform's versatility allows it to operate across different environments, including Hadoop, Apache Mesos, Kubernetes, standalone systems, or cloud platforms. Additionally, it can interface with numerous data sources, granting access to information stored in HDFS, Alluxio, Apache Cassandra, Apache HBase, Apache Hive, and many other systems, thereby offering the flexibility to accommodate a wide range of data processing requirements. Such a comprehensive array of functionalities makes Spark a vital resource for both data engineers and analysts, who rely on it for efficient data management and analysis. The combination of its capabilities ensures that users can tackle complex data challenges with greater ease and speed.

Managing and storing tabular data, like that in CSV or Parquet formats, is crucial for effective data management practices. It's often necessary to transfer large sets of results to clients, particularly in expansive client-server architectures tailored for centralized enterprise data warehousing solutions. The task of writing to a single database while accommodating multiple concurrent processes also introduces various challenges that need to be addressed. DuckDB functions as a relational database management system (RDBMS), designed specifically to manage data structured in relational formats. In this setup, a relation is understood as a table, which is defined by a named collection of rows. Each row within a table is organized with a consistent set of named columns, where each column is assigned a particular data type to ensure uniformity. Moreover, tables are systematically categorized within schemas, and an entire database consists of a series of these schemas, allowing for structured interaction with the stored data. This organized framework not only bolsters the integrity of the data but also streamlines the process of querying and reporting across various datasets, ultimately improving data accessibility for users and applications alike.

LlamaIndex functions as a dynamic "data framework" aimed at facilitating the creation of applications that utilize large language models (LLMs). This platform allows for the seamless integration of semi-structured data from a variety of APIs such as Slack, Salesforce, and Notion. Its user-friendly yet flexible design empowers developers to connect personalized data sources to LLMs, thereby augmenting application functionality with vital data resources. By bridging the gap between diverse data formats—including APIs, PDFs, documents, and SQL databases—you can leverage these resources effectively within your LLM applications. Moreover, it allows for the storage and indexing of data for multiple applications, ensuring smooth integration with downstream vector storage and database solutions. LlamaIndex features a query interface that permits users to submit any data-related prompts, generating responses enriched with valuable insights. Additionally, it supports the connection of unstructured data sources like documents, raw text files, PDFs, videos, and images, and simplifies the inclusion of structured data from sources such as Excel or SQL. The framework further enhances data organization through indices and graphs, making it more user-friendly for LLM interactions. As a result, LlamaIndex significantly improves the user experience and broadens the range of possible applications, transforming how developers interact with data in the context of LLMs. This innovative framework fundamentally changes the landscape of data management for AI-driven applications.