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Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs ClickHouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (8th)
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)
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Amini - PeerSpot reviewer
An incredibly powerful industry leader that enabled us to build critical pieces of national infrastructure
Azure Database is simple and easy to use. We followed the prescribed training and upskilled 10 engineers. They think it's straightforward. They've already got PostgreSQL skills to optimize the solution, so they know what to do. It was easy to get started quickly and become effective. My team speaks highly of the platform's observability and monitoring features. It's as efficient as an enterprise needs it to be and. has all of the tooling and telemetry necessary to run an enterprise database. We take security seriously. The team has looked at the security features, and nothing has been flagged to us. My takeaway as a CTO is that they're comfortable with the security posture, the features, the observability, alerts, and now it integrates into the rest of the Azure landscape. The OpenAI integration and extensions have massively simplified integrating AI into a database. PostgreSQL's native vector capabilities are also incredibly powerful.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate Azure Database for PostgreSQL 10 out of 10."
"The most valuable features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL are its networking capabilities, which allow for integration with other Azure services."
"We use PostgreSQL to speed up application development. Our applications are ready sooner because we don't need to depend on other database teams."
"It is easy to use and optimize. It is very easy for us to understand how a chopped chunk can be translated into embedding."
"Backups are easy, resizing is quick, and the query analyzers help me find out what's happening in each of the queries."
"Azure Database has become easier to use over time."
"In terms of integration, we already have SharePoint online, and we're starting to explore PowerApps and PowerFlow. It's all seamless. The ease of integrating SQL and licensing purposes plays a significant role, making it a comfortable choice for the organization."
"PostgresSQL is acknowledged as an incredibly powerful industry leader. We've built critical pieces of national infrastructure in the UK that rely on Postgres. A version of Postgres on Azure that's easy to adopt enables us to innovate. The addition of AI extensions is even more exciting. It's a significant opportunity for us."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"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."
"ClickHouse is open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"They can offer more RAG extensions. Currently, it only has the vector search. It does not presently support knowledge graph functionalities as Neo4j does. It also does not offer some tools to improve indexing the way other vector databases offer."
"There aren't any notable areas for improvement that I could see. PostgreSQL was self-sufficient with no need for additional database knowledge to maintain it."
"In the future, I would like to see anomaly detection."
"While the flexibility of the server for financial reasons is understandable, better switching between primary and backup would make transitions smoother."
"Support can certainly get better."
"There is a stability issue where, if the database usage peaks quickly, it may crash and require intervention to restore functionality. It does not auto-heal or self-heal in such situations."
"There is a stability issue where, if the database usage peaks quickly, it may crash and require intervention to restore functionality. It does not auto-heal or self-heal in such situations."
"Performance is one area that has constraints for our customers. I believe there could be improvements in the mirroring part and Change Data Capture (CDC)."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pay-as-you-go pricing model plays a critical role in managing database-related costs and resource allocation. We build using Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and maintain a focus on FinOps to control Azure service costs. Some clients are pushy on price. It's critical to automate it, so we're just using it when appropriate and switching it off in certain scenarios."
"There aren't any notable areas for improvement that I could see. PostgreSQL was self-sufficient with no need for additional database knowledge to maintain it."
"The pricing experience is positive. Azure Database for PostgreSQL reduces the need for hardware investments, and the pay-as-you-go pricing model positively affects database-related costs by allowing us to start small and scale as needed."
"We do not pay for a full-year subscription because our usage is still at the beginning phase and not much. The pay-as-you-go model works well for us."
"The tool is open-source."
"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."
"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."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Marketing Services Firm
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Educational Organization
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
Pricing is affordable for us. PostgreSQL is good and affordable for our needs.
What needs improvement with Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
While the flexibility of the server for financial reasons is understandable, better switching between primary and backup would make transitions smoother. I noticed an issue where the primary refuse...
What is your primary use case for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
We started using Azure Database for PostgreSQL ( /products/azure-database-for-postgresql-reviews ) about five to six years ago. Initially, we were doing an on-premises Kubernetes ( /products/kubern...
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 ...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs. ClickHouse and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.