Use Hive table compression

The compression options for Hive tables in Athena vary by engine version and file format.

Hive compression support in Athena engine version 3

The following table summarizes the compression format support in Athena engine version 3 for storage file formats in Apache Hive. Text file format includes TSV, CSV, JSON, and custom SerDes for text. "Yes" or "No" in a cell apply equally to read and write operations except where noted. For the purposes of this table, CREATE TABLE, CTAS, and INSERT INTO are considered write operations. For more information about using ZSTD compression levels in Athena, see Use ZSTD compression levels.

	Avro	Ion	ORC	Parquet	Text file
BZIP2	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
DEFLATE	Yes	No	No	No	No
GZIP	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
LZ4	No	Yes	Yes	Write - No Read - Yes	Yes
LZO	No	Write - No Read - Yes	No	Write - No Read - Yes	Write - No Read - Yes
SNAPPY	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ZLIB	No	No	Yes	No	No
ZSTD	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NONE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Hive compression support in Athena engine version 2

The following table summarizes the compression format support in Athena engine version 2 for Apache Hive. Text file format includes TSV, CSV, JSON, and custom SerDes for text. "Yes" or "No" in a cell apply equally to read and write operations except where noted. For the purposes of this table, CREATE TABLE, CTAS, and INSERT INTO are considered write operations.

	Avro	Ion	ORC	Parquet	Text file
BZIP2	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
DEFLATE	Yes	No	No	No	No
GZIP	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
LZ4	No	No	Yes	Write - Yes Read - No	Write - No Read - Yes
LZO	No	Write - No Read - Yes	No	Yes	Write - No Read - Yes
SNAPPY	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ZLIB	No	No	Yes	No	No
ZSTD	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NONE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes