ClickHouse vs MySQL comparison

ClickHouse and Oracle are both solutions in the Open Source Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8, while Oracle is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. ClickHouse holds a 3.3% mindshare in OSD, compared to Oracle’s 11.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 10 ClickHouse reviews

836 Views
628 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

MySQL

Read 148 MySQL reviews

7,469 Views
5,812 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

MySQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

MySQL and ClickHouse are popular in the database system category, with MySQL often preferred for integration ease and ClickHouse excelling in real-time analytics due to its speed.

Features: MySQL is valued for its compatibility with multiple platforms, support for SQL standards, and its open-source nature offering cost-effectiveness and flexibility for customization. ClickHouse stands out for its high-speed performance in handling large data volumes, real-time analytics, and efficient data compression capabilities.

Room for Improvement: MySQL’s InnoDB engine can be cumbersome compared to MyISAM for simple tasks and lacks some Microsoft feature integrations. ClickHouse can improve in integrating with third-party tools and reduce cloud deployment costs which are generally higher than traditional setups.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MySQL benefits from extensive community support, making deployment from cloud to on-premises relatively easy with less formal support required. ClickHouse offers flexible deployment options but may pose a learning curve for those accustomed to traditional databases.

Pricing and ROI: MySQL provides significant cost advantages with its open-source community version, eliminating licensing fees for cost-sensitive projects. ClickHouse also offers an open-source version but can incur higher costs in cloud hosting, impacting ROI based on deployment strategies.

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

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. MySQL

April 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

6th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (10th)

MySQL

Ranking in Open Source Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

148

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (3rd)

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 MySQL is 11.4%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

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.

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Muzzamil Hussain

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

Native encryption ensures secure data management with a simple deployment

The most valuable feature is the on-premises data encryption facilities. By default, we can provide encryption, and this feature in MySQL is why we prefer it over other databases. The native encryption in MySQL encourages us to use this database model more frequently compared to Oracle and other databases. With Oracle, we have to buy another solution for encryption and masking, but MySQL supports native encryption, which enhances our return on investment. It perfectly supports our ROI, and we have no issues with its functionality.

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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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More ClickHouse pros

"The initial setup was easy. I work in an agile way, which means coding and deploying quickly."

"Setup is easy. MySQL of various flavours has community editions to easily test, deploy, and run."

"The easy access to the data and the ability to sort the data with multiple methods are very valuable features."

"This specific version of this MySQL has been battle tested for a long time. Any issues are known issues and we pretty much don't have any problems when they're in production. So it's very stable."

"The product is flexible and easy to use."

"I would use MySQL for a medium project, with around 1,00,000 hundred thousand users, because of the indexing and stored procedures."

"We are completely comfortable with the database’s performance and it is a mature product. My organization was looking for an open-source database for our smaller customers like the community edition. For bigger customers, we can scale into commercial and supported editions."

"For sure, the solution is very stable."

More MySQL pros

Cons

"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."

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

"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."

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

"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 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 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."

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

More ClickHouse cons

"The backup methods need improvement."

"It can have better monitoring. In addition, the enterprise manager should be able to cater to more than one virtual machine. Currently, you need one license per server. It seems a bit too much to get one license for one enterprise manager. I hope the enterprise manager for MySQL can accommodate more virtual machines for MySQL."

"When I run into issues, I really have to research how to fix them."

"The licensing cost of the solution is expensive, which MySQL needs to consider improving."

"Its scalability can be better. It is probably not as scalable as Oracle. I had some issues with connectors. I used it from a C++ program, and it required some work to make it run, but finally, it worked."

"We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability. These are some of the critical features that we use and look for in a product. It should be easier to manage clusters. Scalability is very important for us because our projects and concurrency requirements are quite big. We also require high availability of the server, application, and other things. It should also have more performance-based features or enhancements from the performance point of view. When we divide a database, it should be able to handle the queries very fast."

"It isn't as reliable as an SQL Server."

"The performance issues in the product can be considered as an area where improvements are required."

More MySQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

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

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

"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."

"MySQL is a cheap solution."

"Microsoft licensing for SQL Server is probably ten times more expensive. I used to work for the government, and I remember when we were looking into upgrading to the enterprise version of SQL Server 2019, the licensing was going to cost 350,000. To get the equivalent in the cloud, it was going to be about four grand to get the same processing power and everything else. With MySQL, it was going to be about 300 for the same licensing. Cost-wise, for sure, there is a huge difference. Would you prefer to pay 300 a month or 3,000 to have the same amount of data resources? You might lose a few options that you need, but it isn't worth the price difference."

"We pay a yearly subscription fee."

"The solution does not come with a licensing fee."

"My company uses MySQL's corporate licenses."

"The pricing falls within the moderate range."

"It is open-source."

"The price of the solution is good because we have a good partner."

More MySQL pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Educational Organization

13%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

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?

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...

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What needs improvement with ClickHouse?

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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 ...

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Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?

MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...

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Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?

I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...

See all answers

What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?

One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...

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Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Cassandra vs ClickHouse

Compared 9% of the time

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Firebird SQL vs MySQL

Compared 28% of the time

PostgreSQL vs MySQL

Compared 15% of the time

SAP HANA vs MySQL

Compared 8% of the time

MariaDB vs MySQL

Compared 6% of the time

Teradata vs MySQL

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

MySQL

March 2025

Download MySQL product report

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

MySQL is a cost-efficient and scalable relational database management system widely used in web, mobile applications, and academic projects.

MySQL is utilized for backend operations, data analysis, reporting, financial transactions, and ERP databases. It supports deployment on local servers, Cloud, and Kubernetes. Its free, open-source nature along with strong community support make it popular among companies. MySQL's compatibility with multiple platforms and programming languages enhances its appeal. While it remains stable and easy to use, areas such as replication, clustering, and backup require improvement to better serve enterprise applications. Enhanced security, error messages, and monitoring tools are also desired for a better user experience.

What are the most important features of MySQL?

Free and Open-Source: No licensing costs, perfect for budget-conscious projects.
Compatibility: Works with multiple platforms and programming languages.
High Performance: Efficient performance across large datasets.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business needs.
Clustering and Replication: Ensures data availability and redundancy.
Easy Installation: Quick setup process on various operating systems.
Community Support: Extensive resources and community assistance.
Cross-Platform: Operates seamlessly on different operating systems.
Data Management Interface: Simplifies data handling and manipulation.

What are the benefits of using MySQL?

Cost Efficiency: Reduce expenses with a free, open-source database.
Scalability: Adapt to increasing data demands effortlessly.
Performance: Handle large datasets with ease and speed.
Community Support: Access a vast pool of knowledge and resources.
Flexibility: Integrate with various platforms and languages for diverse use cases.
Data Reliability: Clustering and replication for high data availability.

In multiple industries, MySQL supports internal applications, billing systems, academic teaching purposes, and ERP databases. Companies leverage MySQL for Cloud and local deployments, ensuring effective data manipulation and backend operations in diverse projects. Its role in financial transactions and reporting further emphasizes its versatility.

Oracle

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. MySQL

April 2025

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