Starburst Galaxy (Free Trial)

Overview

Starburst Galaxy is a fully managed enterprise intelligence platform built by the original creators of Trino, the open-source distributed SQL query engine. Galaxy lets teams query data across clouds, lakes, warehouses, and SaaS sources in place, without building pipelines to move or duplicate it first, then layers governance, performance optimization, and AI access on top. The platform is built around "Icehouse," Starburst's combination of Apache Iceberg and Trino for open lakehouse architecture, and includes AIDA, a conversational AI data assistant that reached general availability in May 2026, giving business users natural-language access to governed data alongside traditional SQL access for analysts and engineers.

Highlights

• Federated queries across 50+ connectors, including Amazon S3, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Databricks, and PostgreSQL

• Icehouse architecture combining Apache Iceberg's open table format with the Trino query engine

• AIDA conversational AI assistant plus an MCP query endpoint for governed access by external AI agents

• Warp Speed acceleration using smart indexing and caching for faster query performance

• Built-in role-based and attribute-based access control (RBAC/ABAC) for centralized governance

• Autoscaling, cross-region connectivity, and workload isolation on Enterprise-tier deployments

• Fault-tolerant clusters designed to complete long-running queries despite node failures

• A self-managed sibling product, Starburst Enterprise, is available for private cloud, hybrid, or on-premises deployment

Supported Cloud Infrastructure

Starburst Galaxy runs natively as a fully managed SaaS on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, selectable by region at deployment. Starburst Enterprise, the self-managed distribution, can additionally be deployed in private cloud, hybrid, or on-premises environments for organizations needing infrastructure outside the three natively supported public clouds. Neither product currently publishes native platform support for Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, or Tencent Cloud; Starburst's 50+ connectors can still query data hosted on those platforms as external sources, but the Galaxy service itself is not deployed there natively.

Free Trial

Starburst Galaxy offers a 30-day free trial of its Enterprise tier, including $500 in usage credits to fully explore the platform, plus temporary access to Enterprise-only features such as autoscaling, cross-region connectivity, and access controls. Sign-up requires only a valid business email, with no credit card needed to activate. After 30 days, the account is automatically downgraded, rather than terminated, to Starburst's permanent free tier, which includes 3 forever-free clusters for continued exploration. Organizations wanting to evaluate the self-managed Starburst Enterprise product instead can request a separate Enterprise trial license key directly from Starburst.