ClickHouse vs Elastic Search comparison

ClickHouse and Elastic are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.9, while Elastic is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. ClickHouse holds a 2.5% mindshare in VD, compared to Elastic’s 6.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Elastic users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 9 ClickHouse reviews

631 Views
498 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Search

Read 67 Elastic Search reviews

2,827 Views
1,299 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

Elastic Search

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ClickHouse and Elastic Search based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Vector Databases solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ClickHouse vs. Elastic Search Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Elastic Search

January 2025

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Helped 832,138 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

ClickHouse

Ranking in Vector Databases

11th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (8th)

Elastic Search

Ranking in Vector Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (11th), Search as a Service (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 2.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 6.4%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Dmitriy Yugin

Senior Data/Web Analyst at Raiffeisen Bank

Can set it up on computer and run queries without depending on the cloud

The tool is open-source, so you don't need to pay for the software itself. However, you need to consider hardware costs and maintenance. A small company can install it on a company computer. For larger companies, you might need to hire a team for maintenance and consider data safety and privacy issues. Integrating ClickHouse with other tools in our data stack was easy. It has native connections to many tools, such as Google and Amazon cloud solutions, and can easily connect with other databases. For beginners, the ease of use depends on your background. If you're familiar with relational databases, it's easy. If not, you might need to read the documentation or ask for support.

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Anand_Kumar

Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology

Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors

Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The best thing about the tool is that I can set it up on my computer and run queries without depending on the cloud. This is why I use it every day."

"The main feature of ClickHouse is the optimizer because we had too many records to deduplicate, and the optimizer took this task by itself."

"We faced a challenge with deploying ClickHouse onto Kubernetes. Recently, we've been using ClickHouse Cloud, and the main issue is the high cost of the cloud service. The pricing isn't very competitive, especially for startups. I would instead buy a server and self-host if I have enough disk space. Besides that, ClickHouse has done very well, with clear goals and effective execution."

"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."

"If you have a real-time basis, you should take a look at ClickHouse because it works on a vector database, and the querying is super fast compared to traditional databases."

"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."

"ClickHouse is much faster than traditional databases like MySQL and MongoDB. Its column-row searching strategy makes it very efficient. With ClickHouse, we can manage multiple databases, automatically insert data from other databases and delete data as needed. It supports real-time query performance, allowing simultaneous data insertion and retrieval. ClickHouse has improved significantly over the past two years, adding more functions and queries, as well as top functionality."

"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."

More ClickHouse pros

"It gives us the possibility to store and query this data and also do this efficiently and securely and without delays."

"The special text processing features in this solution are very important for me."

"Using real-time search functionality to support operational decisions has been helpful."

"The ability to aggregate log and machine data into a searchable index reduces time to identify and isolate issues for an application. Saves time in triage and incident response by eliminating manual steps to access and parse logs on separate systems, within large infrastructure footprints."

"Implementing the main requirements regarding my support portal."

"The security portion of Elasticsearch is particularly beneficial, allowing me to view and analyze security alerts."

"The solution has great scalability."

"It's a stable solution and we have not had any issues."

More Elastic Search pros

Cons

"Initially, I faced challenges integrating ClickHouse, particularly with inserting data from ActiveMQ, which caused duplicates. However, after adjusting the ClickHouse settings, the issue was resolved and there were no more duplicates."

"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."

"There aren't too many improvements I'd suggest for ClickHouse as it covers all my needs. There are just a few technical issues. For example, sometimes, when you want to get unique values and use certain tables, they don't work as expected. But it's not a major problem."

"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."

"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."

"If you join our team, it should be easy for you to use ClickHouse, especially if you are a developer. However, you need to read the documentation and understand the problems you are trying to solve."

"There are some areas where ClickHouse could improve. Specifically, we encountered incompatibilities with its SQL syntax when migrating queries from MySQL or SQL to ClickHouse. This difference in details made it challenging to figure out the exact issues. Additionally, we faced difficulties due to the lack of a proper Django driver for ClickHouse, unlike MySQL, which Django supports out of the box."

"The aggregation capability is a valuable feature. It's highly efficient, allowing us to review entire transaction histories and user activities in the market. We've tried MongoDB, Postgres, MariaDB, and BigQuery, but ClickHouse is the most cost-efficient solution for collecting data at high speeds with minimal cost. We even used ClickHouse Cloud for a month, and it proved to be a great setup, especially for startups looking to handle big data. For example, if there is a need for 2-4 terabytes of data and around 40 billion rows with reasonable computing speed and latency, ClickHouse is ideal. Regarding the real-time query performance of ClickHouse, when using an API server to query it, I achieved query results in less than twenty milliseconds in some of my experiments with one billion rows. However, it depends on the scenario since ClickHouse has limitations in handling mutations. Additionally, one of ClickHouse's strengths is its compression capability. Our experimental server has only four terabytes, and ClickHouse effectively compresses data, allowing us to store large amounts of data at high speed. This compression efficiency is a significant advantage of using ClickHouse."

More ClickHouse cons

"Its licensing needs to be improved. They don't offer a perpetual license. They want to know how many nodes you will be using, and they ask for an annual subscription. Otherwise, they don't give you permission to use it. Our customers are generally military or police departments or customers without connection to the internet. Therefore, this model is not suitable for us. This subscription-based model is not the best for OEM vendors. Another annoying thing about Elasticsearch is its roadmap. We are developing something, and then they say, "Okay. We have removed that feature in this release," and when we are adapting to that release, they say, "Okay. We have removed that one as well." We don't know what they will remove in the next version. They are not looking for backward compatibility from the customers' perspective. They just remove a feature and say, "Okay. We've removed this one." In terms of new features, it should have an ODBC driver so that you can search and integrate this product with existing BI tools and reporting tools. Currently, you need to go for third parties, such as CData, in order to achieve this. ODBC driver is the most important feature required. Its Community Edition does not have security features. For example, you cannot authenticate with a username and password. It should have security features. They might have put it in the latest release."

"Improving machine learning capabilities would be beneficial."

"Elasticsearch could be improved in terms of scalability."

"We have an issue with the volume of data that we can handle."

"Elastic Enterprise Search's tech support is good but it could be improved."

"Enterprise scaling of what have been essentially separate, free open source software (FOSS) products has been a challenge, but the folks at Elastic have published new add-ons (X-Pack and ECE) to help large companies grow ELK to required scales."

"Elastic Search needs to improve authentication. It also needs to work on the Kibana visualization dashboard."

"Elastic Enterprise Search could improve its SSL integration easier. We should not need to go to the back-end servers to do configuration, we should be able to do it on the GUI."

More Elastic Search cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

"For pricing, if you use the self-hosted version, it would be free. Cloud services pricing would be an eight out of ten. I try to minimize costs but still have to monitor usage."

"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."

"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."

"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."

"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."

"The tool is open-source."

"It can be expensive."

"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."

"The version of Elastic Enterprise Search I am using is open source which is free. The pricing model should improve for the enterprise version because it is very expensive."

"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."

"This product is open-source and can be used free of charge."

"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."

"We are paying $1,500 a month to use the solution. If you want to have endpoint protection you need to pay more."

"The cost varies based on factors like usage volume, network load, data storage size, and service utilization. If your usage isn't too extensive, the cost will be lower."

More Elastic Search pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Educational Organization

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?

The tool is open-source.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ClickHouse?

There aren't too many improvements I'd suggest for ClickHouse as it covers all my needs. There are just a few technical issues. For example, sometimes, when you want to get unique values and use ce...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?

I used ClickHouse to collect data, put it in the database, and then analyze it to find insights. The main advantage is that I can install it on my computer instead of using cloud-based solutions, s...

See all answers

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?

Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?

I am not directly involved with pricing or setup costs. While I know a portion is open-source, a paid version might be necessary.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?

There should be more stability. When we started learning it, new versions came out frequently in one quarter with extended features. This can create problems for new developers because they have to...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenSearch vs ClickHouse

Compared 19% of the time

InfluxDB vs ClickHouse

Compared 15% of the time

SingleStore vs ClickHouse

Compared 13% of the time

Milvus vs ClickHouse

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs ClickHouse

Compared 2% of the time

More ClickHouse Competitors

Milvus vs Elastic Search

Compared 17% of the time

Faiss vs Elastic Search

Compared 13% of the time

Pinecone vs Elastic Search

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Search vs Elastic Search

Compared 6% of the time

Qdrant vs Elastic Search

Compared 5% of the time

More Elastic Search Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

February 2025

Download ClickHouse product report

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Search

February 2025

Download Elastic Search product report

Also Known As

No data available

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud

Overview

ClickHouse is renowned for its speed, scalability, and real-time query performance. Its compatibility with SQL standards enhances flexibility while enabling integration with popular tools.

ClickHouse leverages a column-based architecture for efficient data compression and real-time analytics. It seamlessly integrates with tools like Kafka and Tableau and is effective in handling large datasets due to its cost-efficient aggregation capabilities. With robust data deduplication and strong community backing, users can access comprehensive documentation and up-to-date functionality. However, improvements in third-party integration, cloud deployment, and handling of SQL syntax differences are noted, impacting ease-of-use and migration from other databases.

What features make ClickHouse outstanding?

Speed and Scalability: Enables rapid deployment and scalability, particularly on Kubernetes.
SQL Compatibility: Aligns with SQL standards for flexible database management.
Column-based Structure: Offers efficient data compression and quick query performance.
Integration Support: Works with Kafka, Tableau, and other popular platforms.
Data Deduplication: Manages complex data duplication efficiently.

What benefits should users consider?

Cost-Efficiency: Reduces expenses while managing large datasets effectively.
Real-Time Analytics: Provides fast data processing for real-time insights.
Flexibility: Offers multiple integration points and compatibility options.
Robust Documentation: Backed by an active development community, ensuring comprehensive support.

ClickHouse is deployed in sectors like telecommunications for passive monitoring and is beneficial for data analytics, logging Clickstream data, and as an ETL engine. Organizations harness it for machine learning applications when combined with GPT. With the ability to be installed independently, it's an attractive option for avoiding cloud service costs.

ClickHouse

Elasticsearch is a prominent open-source search and analytics engine known for its scalability, reliability, and straightforward management. It's a favored choice among enterprises for real-time data search, analysis, and visualization. Open-source Elasticsearch is free, offering a comprehensive feature set and scalability. It allows full control over deployments but requires managing and maintaining the infrastructure. On the other hand, Elastic Cloud provides a managed service with features like automated provisioning, high availability, security, and global reach.

Elasticsearch excels in handling time-sensitive data and complex search requirements across large datasets. Its scalability allows it to handle growing data volumes efficiently, maintaining high performance and fast response times. Integrated with Kibana, Elasticsearch enables powerful data visualization, providing real-time insights crucial for data-driven decision-making.

Elastic Cloud reduces operational overhead and improves scalability and performance, though it comes with associated costs. It is available on your preferred cloud provider — AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Customers who want to manage the software themselves, whether on public, private, or hybrid cloud, can download the Elastic Stack.

At its core, Elasticsearch is renowned for its full-text search capabilities, capable of performing complex queries and supporting features like fuzzy matching and auto-complete.

Peer reviews from various professionals highlight its strengths and weaknesses. Pros include its detection and correlation features, flexibility, cloud-readiness, extensibility, and efficient search capabilities. However, users have noted challenges like steep learning curves, data analysis limitations, and integration complexities. The platform is generally viewed as stable and scalable, with varying degrees of satisfaction regarding its usability and feature set.

In summary, Elasticsearch stands out for its high-speed search, scalability, and versatile analytics, making it a go-to solution for organizations managing large datasets. Its adaptability to different enterprise needs, robust community support, and continuous development keep it at the forefront of enterprise search and analytics solutions. However, potential users should be aware of its learning curve and the need for skilled personnel for optimization.

Elastic

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Elastic Search

January 2025

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