File Formats

Load data into MotherDuck using various file formats.

Apache Iceberg

Attach an Iceberg REST catalog as a MotherDuck database to read from and write back to Iceberg tables, or scan individual tables by path.

CSV

CSV is a simple text format for tabular data. DuckDB can read CSV files from local paths, HTTPS URLs, and supported cloud storage locations, then load the results into MotherDuck tables.

Delta Lake

MotherDuck supports querying data in the Delta Lake format. The Delta DuckDB extension is loaded automatically when any of the supported Delta Lake functions are called.

DuckLake

Use DuckLake on MotherDuck with managed storage or your own S3, R2, Azure Blob Storage, GCS, or any S3-compatible object storage across regions and clouds.

Excel

Excel workbooks can be loaded through DuckDB's Excel extension and stored in MotherDuck for repeatable SQL analysis.

Google Sheets

Query Google Sheets from MotherDuck with CSV export URLs or the DuckDB Google Sheets community extension.

JSON

JSON is a common format for semi-structured data. DuckDB can read JSON files and load the results into MotherDuck for SQL analytics.

Lance and LanceDB

Lance is an open-source columnar table format that stores embeddings, images and other large binary columns alongside ordinary ones in object storage. It has vector and full-text indexes built into the table, so similarity search is just an ORDER BY distance in your SQL query.

Parquet

Parquet is a columnar file format designed for analytics. DuckDB can query Parquet files directly and persist the result as a MotherDuck table.