🌪️ Vortex

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If you are interested in closer collaboration, please email info@vortex.dev

Overview

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:

• 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

• Extensible Architecture

  • Modeled after Apache DataFusion's extensible approach
  • Pluggable encoding system, type system, compression strategy, & layout strategy
  • Zero-copy compatibility with Apache Arrow

• Open Source, Neutral Governance

  • A Linux Foundation (LF AI & Data) Project
  • Apache-2.0 Licensed

• 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).

Key Features

Core Capabilities

• 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

Technical Architecture

Logical vs Physical Design

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.)

Quick Start

Installation

Rust Crate

All features are exported through the main vortex crate.

cargo add vortex

Python Package

uv add vortex-data

Command Line UI (vx)

For browsing the structure of Vortex files, you can use the vx command-line tool.

# Install pre-built binary (fast, recommended)
cargo binstall vortex-tui

# Or build from source
cargo install vortex-tui --locked

# Or run via Python without installing
uvx --from vortex-data vx --help

# Usage
vx browse <file>

Development Setup

Prerequisites (macOS)

# 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-packages

See the development workflows for Python binding and documentation development, including Maturin rebuilds, targeted tests, and documentation checks.

rust-toolchain.toml pins the toolchain used for development and CI, and is kept on the latest stable release. Building Vortex as a dependency only requires a toolchain that satisfies the Rust version compatibility policy.

Benchmarking

Use vx-bench to run benchmarks comparing engines (DataFusion, DuckDB) and formats (Parquet, Vortex):

# Install the benchmark orchestrator
uv tool install "bench_orchestrator @ ./bench-orchestrator/"

# Run TPC-H benchmarks
vx-bench run tpch --engine datafusion,duckdb --format parquet,vortex

# Compare results
vx-bench compare --run latest

See bench-orchestrator/README.md for full documentation.

Performance Optimization

For optimal performance, we suggest using MiMalloc:

#[global_allocator]
static GLOBAL_ALLOC: MiMalloc = MiMalloc;

Project Information

Rust Version Compatibility Policy

The policy: Vortex supports the four most recent stable minor releases. Writing the latest stable release as 1.N, that means 1.N, 1.N-1, 1.N-2, and 1.N-3 all build Vortex, so the three minor releases older than the latest stable release. Only the minor version is constrained; Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) declared in Cargo.toml must be no newer than 1.N-3, patch releases are never a factor.

An MSRV older than 1.N-3 is always acceptable — supporting extra releases cannot break the guarantee. An MSRV newer than 1.N-3 does not meet the policy. For example, once 1.98 is the latest stable release:

The MSRV is raised in occasional deliberate steps rather than on every Rust release, so it drifts relative to that bound.

How the policy is applied:

• The MSRV is declared once, as rust-version in the root Cargo.toml, and inherited by every crate in the workspace. That value, not this document, is the source of truth.
• The toolchain pinned in rust-toolchain.toml tracks the latest stable release and is independent of the MSRV. It is what contributors and most CI jobs build with.
• CI enforces the declared MSRV in the Rust (MSRV) job, which builds the publishable crates with exactly that toolchain. When it fails, the first choices are to express the code without the newer Rust feature, or to hold back the dependency update that raised the requirement. Raising rust-version is a last resort.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Governance

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.

Contributing

Please do read CONTRIBUTING.md before you contribute.

Reporting Vulnerabilities

If you discover a security vulnerability, please email vuln-report@vortex.dev.

Trademarks

Copyright © Vortex a Series of LF Projects, LLC. For terms of use, trademark policy, and other project policies please see https://lfprojects.org

Acknowledgments

The Vortex project benefits enormously from groundbreaking work from the academic & open-source communities.

Research in Vortex

• BtrBlocks - Efficient columnar compression
• FastLanes & FastLanes on GPU - High-performance integer compression
• FSST - Fast random access string compression
• ALP & G-ALP - Adaptive lossless floating-point compression
• Procella - YouTube's unified data system
• Anyblob - High-performance access to object storage
• ClickHouse - Fast analytics for everyone
• MonetDB/X100 - Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution
• Morsel-Driven Parallelism: A NUMA-Aware Query Evaluation Format for the Many-Core Age
• The FastLanes File Format - Expression Operators

Vortex in Research

• Anyblox - A Framework for Self-Decoding Datasets
• F3 - Open-Source Data File Format for the Future

Open Source Inspiration

• Apache Arrow
• Apache DataFusion
• parquet2 by Jorge Leitao
• DuckDB
• Velox & Nimble

Thanks to all contributors who have shared their knowledge and code with the community! 🚀