Glances
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Comparison · Analytics
Cortex vs OpenHouse
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Cortex and OpenHouse — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Cortex vs OpenHouse: at a glance
What is Cortex?
Cortex 1.22 is on its fourth candidate, with sharded Parquet and years of deprecated flags removed.
Cortex 1.22.0 has been in release candidates since 12 September, reaching rc.3 on 6 October, and GitHub shows no final yet. The candidate adds sharded Parquet conversion and querying, resource-based query eviction that cancels the heaviest query when CPU or heap crosses a threshold, OCI Object Storage as a backend, and an active-series tracker per tenant. It also removes long-deprecated flags and config fields, some of which now stop Cortex from starting if left in place.
What is OpenHouse?
OpenHouse tightens view authorization and moves its optimizer schema to Flyway.
OpenHouse ships small versioned releases straight from merged pull requests, often several a day. Nov 5-6 brought six: view replace and delete now check authorization against the existing view, the Optimizer's tables move to Flyway migrations, its analyzer gets a deadline and exponential backoff, tables refuse to drop partition columns, and stats collection stops listing every file and reads Iceberg metadata instead.
Cortex vs OpenHouse: editorial side-by-side
Cortex
2.5ANALYTICS
Cortex 1.22 is on its fourth candidate, with sharded Parquet and years of deprecated flags removed.
◆ Current state
Cortex 1.22.0 has been in release candidates since 12 September, reaching rc.3 on 6 October, and GitHub shows no final yet. The candidate adds sharded Parquet conversion and querying, resource-based query eviction that cancels the heaviest query when CPU or heap crosses a threshold, OCI Object Storage as a backend, and an active-series tracker per tenant. It also removes long-deprecated flags and config fields, some of which now stop Cortex from starting if left in place.
◆ Where it's heading
The storage arc toward Parquet continues: after 1.21 made Parquet a Store Gateway query mode, 1.22 shards files that exceed column limits. A second arc is protecting shared clusters from heavy tenants, through query eviction, resource-based throttling and concurrent data-byte limits on store gateways. The cleanup is the maturity arc from 1.21 carried further: no-op flags that were tolerated for releases now fail at startup.
◆ Prediction
1.22.0 final should follow rc.3, which added only two fixes. Operators should expect upgrade failures from leftover deprecated flags, and the release notes tell them to grep runtime configs before upgrading.
OpenHouse
5.0ANALYTICS
OpenHouse tightens view authorization and moves its optimizer schema to Flyway.
◆ Current state
OpenHouse ships small versioned releases straight from merged pull requests, often several a day. Nov 5-6 brought six: view replace and delete now check authorization against the existing view, the Optimizer's tables move to Flyway migrations, its analyzer gets a deadline and exponential backoff, tables refuse to drop partition columns, and stats collection stops listing every file and reads Iceberg metadata instead.
◆ Where it's heading
After Views M1 on Oct 30, work has shifted to hardening: authorization parity between views and tables, and making the Optimizer deployable and observable. Each release is narrow and operational.
◆ Prediction
Expect further Views milestones and more Optimizer schema migrations now that Flyway can change its tables.
Alternatives to Cortex and OpenHouse
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Cortex or OpenHouse.
Calibre
Calibre MCP lets your coding agent read RUM and Lighthouse data, then fix the slow code
Dovetail
Dovetail opens its docs to Claude and ChatGPT as co-authors.
Apache SkyWalking
SkyWalking 11.1 builds service maps from OpenTelemetry traces, no SkyWalking agent required.
OpenReplay
OpenReplay's feed is Helm chart bumps behind its asset-cacher deny list.
Tinybird
Tinybird shrinks its Local image by a third after a run of observability updates.
See all Cortex alternatives → · See all OpenHouse alternatives →
Recent activity from Cortex and OpenHouse
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3d agoOpenHouseOpenHouse bumps its Iceberg core dependency
- 4d agoOpenHouseView replace and delete now authorize against the view
- 4d agoOpenHouseOptimizer analyzer gets a deadline and backoff
- 4d agoOpenHouseOptimizer tables move to Flyway migrations
- 4d agoOpenHouseTables now reject dropping a partition column
- 4d agoOpenHouseTable stats read Iceberg metadata, skip file listing
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 4 fixes tenant-deletion cleanup on GCS and Azure
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 3 fixes the ingestion-delay histogram
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 2 adds three bug fixes
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate: sharded Parquet, query eviction, OCI storage
- 5mo agoCortex1.21.1 candidate hardens gossip, ingestion and status pages
- 6mo agoCortex1.21.0-rc.1 fixes memberlist, tenant federation and a memory leak
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Cortex and OpenHouse?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. OpenHouse is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Cortex better than OpenHouse?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. OpenHouse is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Cortex?
Top Cortex alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Cortex alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cortex-metrics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to OpenHouse?
Top OpenHouse alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "OpenHouse alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/openhouse for the full list with editorial commentary on each.