Trino
What it is: Fast distributed SQL query engine (formerly PrestoSQL). Query anything—data lakes, databases, NoSQL—with standard SQL. Presto's active fork.
What It Does Best
Unified SQL interface. 50+ connectors. Query S3, Delta Lake, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch in one SQL query.
Active development. Fastest-moving fork of Presto. Regular releases, active community, enterprise backing.
Cloud-native. Kubernetes-ready, auto-scaling. Separate compute and storage.
Pricing
Free: Open source, Apache 2.0. Managed Trino: Starburst Enterprise (contact sales), AWS EMR, others.
When to Use It
✅ Modern data lake analytics (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi)
✅ Cross-database queries and federation
✅ Cloud data warehouse alternative
✅ Real-time analytics on streaming data
When NOT to Use It
❌ Need data storage (query engine only)
❌ Extremely complex ETL (use Spark)
❌ Small team without ops resources
Bottom line: The leading SQL engine for modern data stacks. More active than Presto, better features. Excellent for data lakes and federation. Choose Trino over Presto for new projects.