Apache Polaris is an open-source catalog for Apache Iceberg, implementing the Iceberg REST catalog specification. Any engine that speaks the REST protocol — Spark, Trino, Flink, and a growing set of managed platforms — can read and write the same tables through it.

Polaris provides namespaces, role-based access control on catalog objects, and credential vending, so engines receive scoped, short-lived storage credentials rather than direct bucket access.

It originated at Snowflake and is incubating at the ASF. Teams choose Polaris when the catalog itself must stay vendor-neutral and portable across clouds — the one layer where managed catalogs like Glue re-introduce platform coupling.

Capabilities:

Table Catalogs

Apache Polaris

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Apache Polaris is an open-source catalog implementing the Iceberg REST specification, enabling interoperable, vendor-neutral table access across engines and clouds.

Visit Apache Polaris

Polaris provides namespaces, role-based access control on catalog objects, and credential vending, so engines receive scoped, short-lived storage credentials rather than direct bucket access.

Capabilities:

Table Catalogs

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lakehouse open-source self-hosted

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