🫶 Join the community on Slack! | 📚 Documentation | 📊 Performance Benchmarks
Vortex is a next-generation columnar file format and toolkit designed for high-performance data processing. It is the fastest and most extensible format for building data systems backed by object storage. It provides:
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⚡️ Blazing Fast Performance
- 100x faster random access reads (vs. modern Apache Parquet)
- 10-20x faster scans
- 5x faster writes
- Similar compression ratios
- Efficient support for wide tables with zero-copy/zero-parse metadata
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🔧 Extensible Architecture
- Modeled after Apache DataFusion's extensible approach
- Pluggable encoding system, type system, compression strategy, & layout strategy
- Zero-copy compatibility with Apache Arrow
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🗳️ Open Source, Neutral Governance
- A Linux Foundation (LF AI & Data) Project
- Apache-2.0 Licensed
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↔️ Integrations- Arrow, DataFusion, DuckDB, Spark, Pandas, Polars, & more
- Apache Iceberg (coming soon)
🟢 Development Status: Library APIs may change from version to version, but we now consider the file format stable. From release 0.36.0, all future releases of Vortex should maintain backwards compatibility of the file format (i.e., be able to read files written by any earlier version >= 0.36.0).
- ✨ Logical Types - Clean separation between logical schema and physical layout
- 🔄 Zero-Copy Arrow Integration - Seamless conversion to/from Apache Arrow arrays
- 🧩 Extensible Encodings - Pluggable physical layouts with built-in optimizations
- 📦 Cascading Compression - Support for nested encoding schemes
- 🚀 High-Performance Computing - Optimized compute kernels for encoded data
- 📊 Rich Statistics - Lazy-loaded summary statistics for optimization
Vortex strictly separates logical and physical concerns:
- Logical Layer: Defines data types and schema
- Physical Layer: Handles encoding and storage implementation
- Built-in Encodings: Compatible with Apache Arrow's memory format
- Extension Encodings: Optimized compression schemes (RLE, dictionary, etc.)
All features are exported through the main vortex crate.
For browsing the structure of Vortex files, you can use the vx command-line tool.
# Install latest release
cargo install vortex-tui --locked
# Or build from source
cargo install --path vortex-tui --locked
# Usage
vx browse <file># Optional but recommended dependencies
brew install flatbuffers protobuf # For .fbs and .proto files
brew install duckdb # For benchmarks
# Install Rust toolchain
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
# or
brew install rustup
# Initialize submodules
git submodule update --init --recursive
# Setup dependencies with uv
uv sync --all-packagesFor optimal performance, we suggest using MiMalloc:
#[global_allocator]
static GLOBAL_ALLOC: MiMalloc = MiMalloc;Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Vortex is an independent open-source project and not controlled by any single company. The Vortex Project is a sub-project of the Linux Foundation Projects. The governance model is documented in CONTRIBUTING.md and is subject to the terms of the Technical Charter.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
If you discovery a security vulnerability, please email [email protected].
Copyright © Vortex a Series of LF Projects, LLC. For terms of use, trademark policy, and other project policies please see https://lfprojects.org
The Vortex project benefits enormously from groundbreaking work from the academic & open-source communities.