Prestovs
Trino
Trino: Trino if you want the branch that has the creators, the community and most of the connector development.
Presto
The Meta-lineage distributed SQL query engine, distinct from the Trino fork
As of 31 August 2026, Presto is free to use. This is PrestoDB, the branch that stayed at the Linux Foundation after the original creators forked away to build Trino in 2020. Softwr lists it under Databases. Presto is made by Presto Foundation (Linux Foundation), available on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
Overview
What Presto does
Presto is a distributed SQL engine that queries data where it sits: object storage in Parquet or ORC, Iceberg and Hudi tables, relational databases, Kafka and more, joining across them in a single statement. A coordinator plans the query, workers execute it in memory, and nothing is copied into a proprietary format first. It was built at Facebook, now Meta, and remains in production there at very large scale. The fact that matters most is the split. In 2018 the original creators left Facebook; the project divided into PrestoDB, which stayed under Facebook and later the Linux Foundation Presto Foundation, and PrestoSQL, which was renamed Trino in January 2021. The creators and most of the active contributor base went to Trino, and the centre of gravity of the wider community went with them. Presto today is maintained principally by Meta, Uber and IBM, which acquired Ahana, the main Presto commercial vendor, in 2023 and folded the technology into watsonx.data. Releases continue at a steady cadence. So the practical decision is not really technical. If you are buying IBM watsonx.data, or you have a Meta-scale deployment and want the branch that Meta itself runs, Presto is a defensible choice. If you are starting fresh and want the larger pool of engineers, connectors, tutorials and commercial vendors, Trino is where that all lives. Choosing Presto by accident, because the name is more familiar, is the mistake this entry exists to prevent.
What people use it for
- An existing PrestoDB estate that needs continued upgrades rather than a migration to Trino
- A team buying IBM watsonx.data, where Presto is the underlying query engine
- Joining a Hive or Iceberg lake to an operational PostgreSQL database in one query without an ETL step
- Very large scale interactive SQL where the Meta-tested branch is a specific requirement
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Presto.
- The original creators and most of the active contributor base left for Trino in 2020, so Presto has the smaller community, fewer connectors and slower feature delivery of the two branches.
- Documentation, tutorials and Stack Overflow answers for the two projects are frequently mixed up, and a solution written for Trino often does not apply, which costs real debugging time.
- It is a query engine with no storage of its own, so query performance is dictated by your file layout, partitioning and statistics, and a badly organised lake makes Presto look slow.
- Memory-bound execution means a single large join can fail the whole query rather than spilling gracefully, and tuning cluster memory settings is a persistent operational chore.
- Commercial support has consolidated into IBM since the Ahana acquisition, so the independent vendor market that once existed around Presto is largely gone.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Presto
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- PrestovsClickHouse
ClickHouse: ClickHouse if you want an engine with its own fast storage rather than a pure federated query layer.
- PrestovsSnowflake
Snowflake: Snowflake if you would rather buy a managed warehouse than operate a query cluster at all.
Pricing
What Presto costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Presto
Free
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Presto Foundation governance under the Linux Foundation
- No node or query limits
- Community support
- Cluster operations and cost are yours
Capabilities
Features
Federated querying
A single SQL statement joining object storage, relational databases and streaming sources
In-memory execution
No intermediate materialisation to disk between query stages
Open table format support
Iceberg, Hudi and Delta Lake connectors alongside Hive tables
Presto C++ workers
A native execution engine, Prestissimo, aimed at reducing JVM overhead
ANSI SQL
Standards-oriented dialect with window functions and complex types
Pluggable connectors
A connector SPI for adding data sources that Presto does not ship
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is this Presto or Trino?
This is PrestoDB, the branch that stayed at Facebook and moved to the Linux Foundation. Trino is the 2020 fork by the original creators.
Which should I choose for a new project?
Trino, in most cases. It has the larger community, more connectors and more commercial options.
Who maintains Presto now?
Principally Meta, Uber and IBM, which acquired the Presto vendor Ahana in 2023.
Is it still actively released?
Yes, releases continue on a regular cadence under the Presto Foundation.
Keep looking
Where to go from Presto
- Presto alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Presto pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Presto badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Databases softwareThe full category
- Best Databases softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Databases software for
Compare Presto with
- ClickHouse
- StarRocks
- Dremio
- DuckDB
- MariaDB
- PostgreSQL
- Apache Kafka
- Meilisearch
- Memcached
- Typesense
- Timeplus
- VerneMQ
- Dragonfly
- Fivetran HVR
- Grist
- IBM Db2
- Instaclustr
- Dremio
Other Databases software
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Open source9 researched notesStreaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary
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Pricing on request12 researched notesSQL query engine and lakehouse layer over Iceberg tables in object storage
Free, then $0.2/hour12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Presto, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Presto
Presto alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Presto pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Presto
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Presto badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Databases software alternatives
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Per tag band per yearNetApp-owned managed service for Cassandra, Kafka, OpenSearch, PostgreSQL and Cadence with a bring-your-own-cloud model
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Per month by connection and session volume
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