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<p align="center"> <img src="https://github.com/man-group/ArcticDB/raw/master/static/ArcticDBCropped.png" width="33%"> </p>
<div align="center"> <p><b>Three minute ArcticDB demo from PyQuantNews</b></p> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_AjD7aVEEM"> <img src="https://github.com/man-group/ArcticDB/raw/master/static/pqn_video_thumbnail.png" alt="Options data in ArcticDB" width="33%"> </a> </div>
<p align="center"> :earth_americas: <a href="http://arcticdb.io">ArcticDB Website</a> | πŸ“˜ <a href="https://docs.arcticdb.com">ArcticDB Docs</a> | πŸ“°: <a href="https://medium.com/arcticdb">ArcticDB Blog</a> | :mega: <a href="https://www.man.com/man-group-brings-powerful-dataframe-database-product-arcticdb-to-market-with-bloomberg">Press Release</a> | :mega: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/company/press/man-group-brings-powerful-dataframe-database-product-arcticdb-to-market-with-bloomberg/">Press Release</a> | :busts_in_silhouette: <a href="#community">Community</a> <br /><br /> <a href="https://github.com/man-group/ArcticDB/actions"><img src="https://github.com/man-group/ArcticDB/actions/workflows/build.yml/badge.svg"/></a> </p>

ArcticDB is a high performance, serverless DataFrame database built for the Python Data Science ecosystem. Launched in March 2023, it is the successor to Arctic.

ArcticDB offers an intuitive Python-centric API enabling you to read and write Pandas DataFrames to S3 or LMDB utilising a fast C++ data-processing and compression engine.

ArcticDB allows you to:

ArcticDB handles data that is big in both row count and column count, so a 20-year history of more than 400,000 unique securities can be stored in a single symbol. Each symbol is maintained as a separate entity with no shared data which means ArcticDB can scale horizontally across symbols, maximising the performance potential of your compute, storage and network.

ArcticDB is designed from the outset to be resilient; there is no single point of failure, and persistent data structures in the storage mean that once a version of a symbol has been written, it can never be corrupted by subsequent updates. Pulling compressed data directly from storage to the client means that there is no server to overload, so your data is always available when you need it.

Quickstart

Prebuilt binary availability

PyPI (Python 3.6 - 3.11)conda-forge (Python 3.8 - 3.11)
Linux (Intel/AMD)βœ”οΈβœ”οΈ
Windows (Intel/AMD)βœ”οΈβž–
MacOSβž–Beta️

For conda-forge see the release-info.

Storage compatibility

LinuxWindowsMac
S3βœ”οΈβœ”οΈβœ”οΈ
LMDBβœ”οΈβœ”οΈβœ”οΈ
Azure Blob Storageβœ”οΈβœ”οΈβž–

We have tested against the following S3 backends:

Installation

Install ArcticDB:

$ pip install arcticdb

or using conda-forge

$ conda install -c conda-forge arcticdb

Import ArcticDB:

>>> import arcticdb as adb

Create an instance on your S3 storage (with or without explicit credentials):

# Leave AWS to derive credential information
>>> ac = adb.Arctic('s3://MY_ENDPOINT:MY_BUCKET?aws_auth=true')

# Manually specify creds
>>> ac = adb.Arctic('s3://MY_ENDPOINT:MY_BUCKET?region=YOUR_REGION&access=ABCD&secret=DCBA')

Or create an instance on your local disk:

>>> ac = adb.Arctic("lmdb:///<path>")

Create your first library and list the libraries in the instance:

>>> ac.create_library('travel_data')
>>> ac.list_libraries()

Create a test dataframe:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> import pandas as pd
>>> NUM_COLUMNS=10
>>> NUM_ROWS=100_000
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(0,100,size=(NUM_ROWS, NUM_COLUMNS)), columns=[f"COL_{i}" for i in range(NUM_COLUMNS)], index=pd.date_range('2000', periods=NUM_ROWS, freq='h'))

Get the library, write some data to it, and read it back:

>>> lib = ac['travel_data']
>>> lib.write("my_data", df)
>>> data = lib.read("my_data")

To find out more about working with data, visit our docs


Documentation

The source code for the ArcticDB docs are located in the docs folder, and are hosted at docs.arcticdb.io.

License

ArcticDB is released under a Business Source License 1.1 (BSL)

BSL features are free to use and the source code is available, but users may not use ArcticDB for production use or for a Database Service, without agreement with Man Group Operations Limited.

Use of ArcticDB in production or for a Database Service requires a paid for license from Man Group Operations Limited and is licensed under the ArcticDB Software License Agreement. For more information please contact arcticdb@man.com.

The BSL is not certified as an open-source license, but most of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) criteria are met. Please see version conversion dates in the below table:

ArcticDB VersionLicenseConverts to Apache 2.0
1.0Business Source License 1.1Mar 16, 2025
1.2Business Source License 1.1May 22, 2025
1.3Business Source License 1.1Jun 9, 2025
1.4Business Source License 1.1Jun 23, 2025
1.5Business Source License 1.1Jul 11, 2025
1.6Business Source License 1.1Jul 25, 2025
2.0Business Source License 1.1Aug 29, 2025
3.0Business Source License 1.1Sep 13, 2025
4.0Business Source License 1.1Sep 27, 2025
4.1Business Source License 1.1Nov 1, 2025
4.2Business Source License 1.1Nov 12, 2025
4.3Business Source License 1.1Feb 7, 2026
4.4Business Source License 1.1Apr 5, 2026
4.5Business Source License 1.1Aug 14, 2026
5.0Business Source License 1.1Oct 31, 2026
5.1Business Source License 1.1Nov 15, 2026

Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted a Code of Conduct. If you have any concerns about the Code, or behaviour that you have experienced in the project, please contact us at arcticdb@man.com.

Contributing/Building From Source

We welcome your contributions to help us improve and extend this project!

Please refer to the Contributing page and feel free to open issues on GitHub.

We are also always looking for feedback from our dedicated community! If you have used ArcticDB please let us know, we would love to hear about your experience!

Our release process is documented here.

Community

We would love to hear how your ArcticDB journey evolves, email us at arcticdb@man.com or come chat to us on Twitter!

Interested in learning more about ArcticDB? Head over to our blog!

Do you have any questions or issues? Chat to us and other users through our dedicated Slack Workspace - sign up for Slack access on our website.