In modern data architectures, selecting the right storage and management solution is essential for building efficient, reliable, and scalable pipelines. Two popular choices that often come up are Parquet and Apache Iceberg. While they can work together, they serve different purposes and solve different problems.

This article explains what each one is, when to use them, and why it matters.

What is Parquet?

Parquet is a columnar storage file format designed for high-performance analytical queries.

Key Features of Parquet

• Stores data by columns, making queries that read a subset of columns much faster.
• Achieves high compression, reducing storage costs.
• Widely supported by tools like Spark, Hive, Presto, Trino, AWS Athena, and pandas.
• Best suited for immutable datasets that do not change after being written.

When to Use Parquet

• When you need to store large volumes of data efficiently for analytics.
• When the data is append-only or static.
• When you are working with ETL jobs that write data once and then query it frequently.

Common Use Cases

• Exported reports or static datasets.
• Data warehouse extracts.
• Historical snapshots.

What is Iceberg?

Apache Iceberg is a table format that manages datasets stored in files like Parquet, ORC, or Avro. Iceberg adds metadata and control on top of the files, enabling advanced capabilities.

Key Features of Iceberg

• Supports ACID transactions for reliable data operations like inserts, updates, deletes, and merges.
• Provides schema evolution: you can safely add, drop, or rename columns over time.
• Allows partition evolution: you can change the way data is partitioned without recreating the dataset.
• Enables time travel: you can query historical versions of the data.
• Optimized for both batch processing and real-time streaming.

When to Use Iceberg

• When you need data versioning and rollback options.
• When your workflows include updates, deletions, or incremental writes.
• When you are building or managing large, evolving data lakes.
• When you need efficient partitioning that can adapt over time.

Common Use Cases

• Data lakes with frequent updates.
• Slowly changing dimensions (SCD) in analytics systems.
• Pipelines that require real-time ingestion and processing.
• Compliance workflows that involve selective data deletion.

Quick Comparison

Feature or Requirement	Parquet	Iceberg
File format	Yes	No (uses Parquet, ORC, Avro)
Table abstraction with metadata	No	Yes
ACID transactions	No	Yes
Schema evolution	Basic	Advanced
Partition management	Manual	Automatic and Evolvable
Time travel	No	Yes
Best suited for	Immutable datasets	Mutable datasets
Example use case	BI report exports	Streaming data lakes

Final Thoughts

If you need an efficient way to store large datasets for fast, analytical queries, and you do not plan to update the data after writing, Parquet is the right choice.

If you need to manage data that changes over time, require transaction support, want schema flexibility, or need time travel, Iceberg is the better option.

It is important to understand that Parquet and Iceberg are not competitors. In fact, Iceberg commonly uses Parquet files for its storage. Iceberg is about managing tables, while Parquet is about efficiently storing the data inside those tables.

If you are designing data platforms that may grow in complexity, starting with Iceberg can save you future migration efforts and provide long-term flexibility.