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ClickHouse vs MariaDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

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 Open Source Databases
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (10th)
MariaDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 3.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 6.5%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

ArpitShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Open-source freedom with efficient data handling and room for documentation growth
A significant area for improvement is the documentation, which is not comprehensive and lacks centralized resources, making it difficult to find information. Additionally, ClickHouse lacks robust support for transactional data, which limits its use as a primary database. My developer experience could be enhanced through better-organized documentation, perhaps by offering a cheat sheet or centralized guide for common setup and usage scenarios.
KumarManish - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, cost-effective, and integrates seamlessly with other products
We had planned for an RDBMS version and not NoSQL. We use MariaDB Galera Cluster. It's a good product. It is cheap, scalable, performs well, and is efficient. We use GCP’s BigQuery for machine learning. We must follow the best practices of the tool. We missed some best practices like the storage engine and InnoDB. It was very difficult to identify why we were having performance issues. Then, we realized that some of our tables were still on MyISAM, the default storage engine. When we switched it back to the InnoDB, it was very smooth. InnoDB is the recommended one. We must follow the best practices given in the documentation during the initial setup. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ClickHouse is open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"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."
"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 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."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"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."
"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."
"The solution's features have effectively met our operational requirements as a standard SQL database."
"The stability of MariaDB is good, it has high availability."
"MariaDB performs well as the backend database for our cloud-based telephony solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is a relational database, which is fairly reliable...It is a stable solution."
"We use MariaDB for identity provider services. Most of the things that we are doing are deployed in the container mode. All such solutions require a database, and MariaDB is easier to use for these kinds of deployments."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution is very easy to implement."
"MariaDB is easy to install and is stable and scalable."
 

Cons

"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."
"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."
"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."
"The main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."
"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."
"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."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."
"The interface should be more user-friendly. It should be able to connect directly to the database and Interact with it without having to use commands. It needs better integration."
"Could have more integration with user platforms."
"MariaDB's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"MariaDB doesn't handle long or complex SQL queries quite as well as Oracle Database."
"Data continuity could be improved."
"With respect to clustering and the master-slave configuration, sometimes the slave goes out of synch."
"The features available are very basic."
"An improvement would be scaling it up to the levels of Oracle, especially when it comes to resilience, so that we can do higher transactions for two databases or power our operation."
 

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 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."
"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."
"MariaDB is an open-source software, meaning I don't need to pay for the product."
"The solution is free, but if you want the enterprise version you will need to pay for some licenses but the cost is less than other solutions, such as Oracle."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4000.00 per year and the licensing is based on the software and the number of posts that you make."
"MariaDB is a free-to-use solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"The price could be less expensive."
"We use the solution's free version."
"It's an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?
ClickHouse is open source without direct fees, unlike other databases that have hidden fees or restrict hosting to their platforms. The open-source nature of ClickHouse allows for complete flexibil...
What needs improvement with ClickHouse?
A significant area for improvement is the documentation, which is not comprehensive and lacks centralized resources, making it difficult to find information. Additionally, ClickHouse lacks robust s...
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
The main use case for ClickHouse is as a data warehouse for handling large volumes of data that exceed the capabilities of traditional databases like Postgres. I use it for creating dashboards and ...
What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
I have found the price of commercial MariaDB to be pretty steep, although not as high as Oracle. Customers often prefer the Community Edition because it's free.
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The only potential area for improvement could be the pricing model, which might benefit from being more flexible or a bit cheaper.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.