Fast, small, open: pick three.
Vortex is an open-source columnar file format for fast scans, random access, and compression.
$ cargo add vortex$ uv add vortex-data$ uvx --from vortex-data vx --helpINSTALL vortex; LOAD vortex; SELECT * FROM read_vortex('data.vortex');$ cargo add vortex-datafusionimplementation("dev.vortex:vortex-spark_2.13:0.90.0:all")File format benchmarksbench.vortex.devread 12 Nov 2026
| Benchmark | Vortex | Parquet | Lance | Arrow | vs Parquet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scan | 6.77× | 1.00× | 1.37× | — | 6.8× faster |
| Write | 2.69× | 1.00× | 0.74× | — | 2.7× faster |
| ClickBench | 40.00 ms | 65.50 ms | 568.18 ms | — | 64% faster |
| TPC-H | 60.76 ms | 143.23 ms | 844.20 ms | — | 2.4× faster |
| GPU, cuDF, end to end, hot, on GH200, NDS-H SF10, Parquet the fastest of four configurations per query, from the Vortex UW–Madison talk | 17.00 ms | 65.88 ms | N/A | — | 3.9× faster |
| Random access | 0.73 ms | 69.37 ms | 2.12 ms | 3.79 ms | 94× faster |
| File size | 1.11× | 1× | 2.02× | 5.42× | 11% larger |
Underlined: the best in each row