OpenLake
The modern lakehouse - without
handing over your data.
Snowflake and Databricks are excellent managed platforms. Their model is "bring your data to our cloud, and we run everything for you." For most companies that's a good trade. For regulated, sovereign, and multi-account organizations it's the wrong one - and OpenLake exists so you don't have to make it. Here's the comparison, stated fairly.
Dimension by dimension
| Dimension | Snowflake | Databricks | OpenLake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where your data lives | Snowflake's account | Your storage, their control plane | Your account, your buckets, your keys |
| Table format | Proprietary + Iceberg (newer) | Delta + Iceberg | Apache Iceberg - open and native |
| Query engine | Proprietary | Proprietary (Photon) + Spark | Trino - open source |
| Catalog | Proprietary + Polaris | Unity Catalog | Open REST (Apache Polaris) |
| Data sharing | Direct shares: in-region, both parties in Snowflake; cross-cloud auto-fulfillment now covers open table formats, but works by replication - a copy | Delta Sharing - now serves the Iceberg REST catalog to any client, still mediated through their platform | Publish governed products - masked, row-filtered, versioned by release - and let the other side pull them: another OpenLake, Delta Sharing clients, or a partner's own cloud role. No vendor plane; every release and read audited under the human's name |
| Cost model | Credits | DBUs | Your infrastructure bill, plus per-query measured cost attribution (CPU + bytes scanned) at rates you set - repriceable across all history |
| Runs air-gapped / classified | IL5 on GovCloud (CUI, NIPRNet-connected) - not classified; deployment there announced, roughly a year out | IL5 on GovCloud (CUI); the air-gapped build is cut-down and expected to be retired | Yes - a dedicated high-side mode: offline artifacts, internal PKI |
| Governance ownership | Vendor-run | Vendor-run | You run it and can attest to it - including the audit database itself |
| Machine / automation access | Key-pair service users; rotation is manual key management | Service principals + PATs, platform-managed | Certificate-authenticated admin API - same permission model as humans, every action audited under the certificate's name, access revocable in about a minute |
| Multi-account state | ORGADMIN views inside their platform | Unity Catalog account console | Attestable: declared-vs-deployed and account-vs-account drift, measured by tooling you run and rendered from a report you published |
| Lock-in / exit | Format + compute + economics | Format + control plane | Open Iceberg you already own - leaving is pointing another engine at the same files |
| Managed convenience | Highest - fully managed | High - fully managed | You operate it, reduced to parameterized Infrastructure as Code |
| Ecosystem depth | Very deep, marketplace network effects | Very deep | Solid - the Trino / Spark / Iceberg open-source ecosystem |
Stated fairly on purpose: the last two rows are theirs. If your data can freely live in a vendor cloud and maximum convenience is the goal, the incumbents are the better choice. The rest of this page is for everyone who can't make that trade.
What only a platform you own can do
Runs where vendors can't
Air-gapped and classified environments with no internet at runtime: offline artifacts, internal PKI and mTLS, identity from your own provider. If you must run where the managed platforms are absent, the comparison isn't "which platform" - it's OpenLake or build it yourself.
Sharing that never leaves your boundary
Publish a product - a governed copy of a table, masked and row-filtered by your policy, stamped with a numbered release - and the other side pulls it: another OpenLake, a Delta Sharing client such as Databricks or Power BI, or a partner's own cloud role. No vendor cloud in the path. Every release and every read lands in an audit database you own, with the human's name on it, and you can revoke in seconds. The entire sharing path - storage, engine, governance, audit - runs in accounts you control.
Exit is a config change
Your tables are open Apache Iceberg in your own buckets from day one. "Leaving OpenLake" means pointing another engine at the same files. No egress project, no format migration, no re-negotiation from a position of weakness. Exit-optionality is a feature, not an afterthought.
No credits. No DBUs.
You pay your cloud bill - and OpenLake attributes real, measured cost to every query: CPU-time plus data scanned, at rates you set to your actual blended infrastructure price. Change the rates and all history re-prices consistently. Compute parks itself when idle and wakes when queried.
Governance you can attest to
Your identity provider is the single source of truth end to end - the app, the query engine, and the data. Every query lands in an audit trail that lives in your database, under your keys, in your account. When a security officer asks "who read this table," the answer is yours to produce - not a support ticket to a vendor.
Multi-account by construction
A large organization is a federation of accounts, and the managed model handles that worst. OpenLake deploys the same versioned templates to any number of accounts - a new environment or account is a parameter change - and governs data access across them without funneling everything into one vendor lake.
An honest decision guide
Choose a managed incumbent when…
- Your data can freely live in a vendor's cloud
- You want fully managed, zero-ops operations above all
- You need the deepest feature and marketplace ecosystem from day one
Choose OpenLake when…
- The data must never leave your compliance boundary - regulated, sovereign, or classified
- You must run where the vendors are not, including air-gapped environments
- You have many accounts to govern inside your own organization
- Open-format ownership and exit-optionality are requirements, not preferences
One more honest note: for regulated and government buyers, the alternatives that usually show up aren't Snowflake or Databricks - they're a large systems integrator building a bespoke platform, or a deep vendor entanglement you can't leave. OpenLake's answer to both is the same: a productized, repeatable platform on open formats, owned by you, with exit as a config change.