ClickHouse vs Milvus comparison

ClickHouse and The Milvus Project are both solutions in the Open Source Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.9, while The Milvus Project is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.4. ClickHouse holds a 2.3% mindshare in OSD, compared to The Milvus Project’s 5.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of The Milvus Project users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 10 ClickHouse reviews

546 Views
433 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Milvus

Read 5 Milvus reviews

1,244 Views
1,080 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

Milvus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Milvus and ClickHouse are competing in the data analytics solutions category. ClickHouse seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set that supports high-speed query performance and complex analytics, while Milvus is noted for its competitive pricing and support.

Features: Milvus is known for its efficient vector search capabilities, high scalability ideal for AI-powered applications, and multiple similarity calculation methods such as L2 norm and cosine similarity. ClickHouse is praised for its real-time query performance, advanced SQL support, and efficiency in processing large datasets, making it suitable for complex data processing tasks.

Room for Improvement: Milvus could improve by enhancing its user interface for simpler data management, increasing integration capabilities with third-party tools, and reducing the learning curve for non-experienced users. ClickHouse might focus on streamlining its deployment complexity, improving documentation coverage, and addressing limitations in handling data mutations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Milvus offers straightforward deployment, simplifying setup with strong support channels that enhance the customer experience. ClickHouse provides robust support for extensive data environments and dedicated assistance but can be complex in deployment due to its wide range of setup options.

Pricing and ROI: Milvus offers competitive setup costs with beneficial ROI, appealing to organizations prioritizing cost-effective AI solutions. ClickHouse involves higher initial investment because of its comprehensive features but delivers strong ROI for businesses needing in-depth analytics and complex data processing.

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

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Milvus

January 2025

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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

8th

Ranking in Vector Databases

11th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Milvus

Ranking in Open Source Databases

10th

Ranking in Vector Databases

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 2.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Milvus is 5.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source 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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Sameer Bhangale

Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Provides quick and easy containerization, but documentation is not very user-friendly

Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly. Chroma DB provides super user-friendly documentation, enabling new users to get started quickly. Chroma DB's setup doesn't have many dependencies, whereas Milvus usually comes with some dependencies because of the way it needs to be deployed. Unlike Milvus, it's very easy to do POCs with Chroma DB.

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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."

"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

More ClickHouse pros

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."

"Milvus offers multiple methods for calculating similarities or distances between vectors, such as L2 norm and cosine similarity. These methods help in comparing different vectors based on specific use cases. For instance, in our use case, we find that the L2 distance works best, but you can experiment with different methods to find the most suitable one for your needs."

"I like the accuracy and usability."

"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."

"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."

Cons

"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."

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

"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 main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More ClickHouse cons

"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."

"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."

"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."

"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"The tool is open-source."

"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."

"Milvus is an open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Educational Organization

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

22%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 Milvus?

I like the accuracy and usability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Milvus?

Milvus could be improved how it could automatically generate insights from the data it holds. Milvus maintains embedding information and knows the relationships between data points. It would be use...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Milvus?

Milvus is primarily used in RAG, which involves retrieving relevant documents or data to augment the generation of new content. Milvus helps convert text and other data into a vector space, and the...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenSearch vs ClickHouse

Compared 18% of the time

InfluxDB vs ClickHouse

Compared 17% of the time

SingleStore vs ClickHouse

Compared 12% of the time

Cassandra vs ClickHouse

Compared 10% of the time

Redis vs ClickHouse

Compared 6% of the time

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Elastic Search vs Milvus

Compared 21% of the time

LanceDB vs Milvus

Compared 19% of the time

Faiss vs Milvus

Compared 14% of the time

OpenSearch vs Milvus

Compared 11% of the time

Supabase Vector vs Milvus

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Open Source Databases

February 2025

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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

Milvus is a powerful tool for efficiently storing and retrieving large-scale vectors or embeddings. It is widely used in applications such as similarity search, recommendation systems, image and video retrieval, and natural language processing.

With its fast and accurate search capabilities, scalability, and support for multiple programming languages, Milvus is suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases.

Users appreciate its efficient search capabilities, ability to handle large-scale data, support for various data types, and user-friendly interface.

Milvus enables easy retrieval of information from vast datasets, regardless of the data format, and is praised for its high performance and scalability. The intuitive and easy-to-use interface is also highlighted as a valuable aspect of the platform.

The Milvus Project

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

1. Alibaba Group 2. Tencent 3. Baidu 4. JD.com 5. Meituan 6. Xiaomi 7. Didi Chuxing 8. ByteDance 9. Huawei 10. ZTE 11. Lenovo 12. Haier 13. China Mobile 14. China Telecom 15. China Unicom 16. Ping An Insurance 17. China Life Insurance 18. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 19. Bank of China 20. Agricultural Bank of China 21. China Construction Bank 22. PetroChina 23. Sinopec 24. China National Offshore Oil Corporation 25. China Southern Airlines 26. Air China 27. China Eastern Airlines 28. China Railway Group 29. China Railway Construction Corporation 30. China Communications Construction Company 31. China Merchants Group 32. China Evergrande Group

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Milvus

January 2025

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