Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

ClickHouse
Ranking in Open Source Databases
9th
Ranking in Vector Databases
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Ranking in Vector Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Andrei Kochemirovskii - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 16, 2024
User-friendly and can be used for analytics and various other use-cases
ClickHouse provides the best real-time query performance in the market if it is used properly. Generally, ClickHouse is not so easy to use because it's designed in such a way that you should be aware of the infrastructure. The solution is complicated, but it is easy for someone with experience and knowledge. I would recommend the solution to other users. ClickHouse is a magnificent solution, but users should first read a few articles about it to understand how to use it properly and how not to use it. Users should take a learning course to be aware of its architecture and to use it properly. Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
Faustine Chisasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 10, 2024
Easy to manage, good integration, powerful plugins, improves performance, and saves on storage space
The most valuable feature is support for the Timescale DB extension. We managed to reduce the storage space needed to 10% of the original size, without affecting data integrity, and we significantly improved the performance. The database engine is easy to manage, the tuning is friendly, and the integration with supported extensions is friendly too. The database engine is free and open-source, too. Since we did everything internally, it has greatly reduced the costs of setting up our systems. It also supports diverse kinds of replication, which is crucial for a high availability environment that we plan to set in the near future.

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."
"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."
"The main feature of ClickHouse is the optimizer because we had too many records to deduplicate, and the optimizer took this task by itself."
"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."
"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."
"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."
"It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping."
"The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions."
"Scalable, stable, and easy to manage database system, with a straightforward installation."
"Postgres has some functions called JSONB aggregators or other aggregators, which are quite useful."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"The solution is scalable, it is very good."
"This is an open-source solution, operates at a high speed, and supports more than one SQL language."
"PostgreSQL makes it very adaptable to several descriptions of a record. Instead of having several tables or several relations for one entity, I can adapt this entity. It can be a multiform entity. For example, here in Mexico, a company and a person can be sold to us as a physical entity or a physical person."
 

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."
"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."
"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"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."
"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."
"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."
"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."
"There could be a plugin to distribute the data on servers for the product."
"The price could be better."
"The performance of PostgreSQL could improve."
"It needs more integration."
"It is possible that in the newer version this has been addressed, but I would like the deployment in microservices architecture could be improved."
"Sometimes, it becomes slow because of the network. So, there is room for improvement in performance."
"The solution could improve the integration."
"It could be improved by using parallelization. You want basically, distributed computing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-source."
"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."
"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."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"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."
"The tool is free."
"Affordable solution."
"We do not pay for licensing."
"The solution requires a license."
"It could be much cheaper. If you would like to build an application on Amazon today, PostgreSQL is the standard database with Redshift. If you want other databases, you can add them, but PostgreSQL is the basis of everything. It's a question of money, that's it."
"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."
"It is also open-source so it is free."
"It is free. There is no license on it."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
802,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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?
We used the free, self-hosted community version of ClickHouse.
What needs improvement with ClickHouse?
ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers.
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
Our company had about nine platforms, each with its own database and data. We had to gather all these data in one database and just one table. We used Apache Superset to integrate this database wit...
How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What do you like most about PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay.
 

Comparisons

 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Apple 2. Cisco 3. Fujitsu 4. Instagram 5. Netflix 6. Red Hat 7. Sony 8. Uber 9. Cisco Systems 10. Skype 11. LinkedIn 12. Etsy 13. Yelp 14. Reddit 15. Dropbox 16. Slack 17. Twitch 18. WhatsApp 19. Snapchat 20. Shazam 21. SoundCloud 22. The New York Times 23. Cisco WebEx 24. Atlassian 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Heroku 27. GitLab 28. Zalando 29. OpenTable 30. Trello 31. Square Enix 32. Bloomberg
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
802,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.