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ClickHouse

A fast open-source column-oriented database management system for real-time analytical SQL

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ClickHouse is an open-source, column-oriented database management system designed for real-time analytical queries over large datasets using SQL. It addresses the need for fast reporting and exploration of data at scale, with vectorized query execution and compression techniques that maximize CPU efficiency and reduce storage. It can serve as a standalone database or as a speed layer alongside existing data warehouses and OLTP databases.

Key capabilities include real-time analytics, observability through ClickStack, data warehousing, and ML/GenAI workloads with vector search. ClickPipes provides managed integration pipelines for ingesting data from sources such as Kafka, Amazon S3, PostgreSQL CDC, and MongoDB CDC. Integrations span data visualization tools like Grafana, Tableau, and Power BI, language clients for Python, Go, Java, Rust, and others, plus AI/ML tools including LangChain and chDB. Deployment options include ClickHouse Cloud on AWS, GCP, and Azure, self-managed open-source ClickHouse, and ClickHouse Local for querying files without a server.

ClickHouse Cloud offers Basic, Scale, and Enterprise plans with separate metering for compute and storage, scaling to zero when idle. A 30-day free trial with credits is available, and the open-source distribution is free to self-host. Bring Your Own Cloud deployment is offered for data residency requirements, and ClickHouse Managed Postgres is available in beta across all plans.

12 alternatives to ClickHouse

Ranked by how well each tool replaces ClickHouse: shared features, audience, price and popularity.

  1. PostgreSQL

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  2. Citus Data

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  3. Apache Drill

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  4. TablePlus

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    59 out of 100 match—

  5. Tiger Data

    Time-Series PostgreSQL at Petabyte Scale

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  6. Apache Impala

    Open source, native analytic database for open data and table formats.

    Covers 0 of 15 key features.

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  7. Apache Cassandra

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    Covers 0 of 15 key features and has a free plan.

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  8. CrateDB

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  9. Apache Kudu

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  10. Aerospike

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  11. PingCAP (TiDB)

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  12. QuestDB

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    Covers 0 of 15 key features and has a free plan.

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