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ClickHouse vs Faiss 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
Ranking in Vector Databases
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Faiss
Ranking in Open Source Databases
13th
Ranking in Vector Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 4.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Faiss is 4.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Aswini Atibudhi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides real-time data insights with high flexibility and responsive support
The basic challenge for ClickHouse is the documentation, which isn't ideal, but it's mature and stable with more columnar storage, compression, and parallel processing, making it the best for OLAP. In terms of improvements, it's not designed for very frequent small writes, making it less scalable in write-intensive workloads, and it's not flourishing in transactional use cases or when ingesting streaming data, such as batching or buffering, which is something ClickHouse will improve.
Vasu Bansal - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides quick query search and has a big database
I did not face any issues integrating Faiss with other tools. I would recommend the solution to other users. Faiss has facilitated my AI-driven project very well. I recommend that other users use it for their AI projects because it provides quick query search and has a big database. Overall, I rate the solution nine and a half 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

"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."
"ClickHouse is very easy to use; one of the good features is that it has joins, which were not present in Druid, and Druid was quite expensive, especially with our applications at Sam's Club utilizing ClickHouse very quickly."
"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 open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"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 a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."
"In terms of improvements, it's not designed for very frequent small writes, making it less scalable in write-intensive workloads, and it's not flourishing in transactional use cases or when ingesting streaming data, such as batching or buffering, which is something ClickHouse will improve."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"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."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"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."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"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."
"The tool is open-source."
"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
 

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?
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?
The basic challenge for ClickHouse is the documentation, which isn't ideal, but it's mature and stable with more columnar storage, compression, and parallel processing, making it the best for OLAP....
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
I have experience in ClickHouse ( /products/clickhouse-reviews ), and we also use Apache Druid ( /products/druid-reviews ), which has corporate support from Druid ( /products/druid-reviews ), along...
What do you like most about Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I didn't know what algorithm was being learned to fetch my query. It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run. I can then compare the results to s...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. Faiss and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.