No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

ClickHouse vs Firebird SQL comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (8th)
Firebird SQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 6.4%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Firebird SQL is 9.9%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ClickHouse6.4%
Firebird SQL9.9%
Other83.7%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2785038 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
Data observability has enabled real‑time analytics and cost savings but needs smoother inserts and cleanup
ClickHouse could be improved concerning data insertion, especially given the high amount of data handled. Constant efforts are made to optimize the features on its own, but with merges and inserts, only a single insert query can be performed allowing for the input of only 100,000 rows per second. It would be beneficial to insert more data and have configurations that are less user-operated. Ideally, ClickHouse would optimize itself to handle these processes automatically, reducing the need to contact the ClickHouse support team for infrastructure optimization. Additionally, delays are experienced when trying to delete databases with corrupt data, taking too much time and causing major outages, which necessitate contacting multiple teams across continents for resolution. The community surrounding ClickHouse also seems limited, providing a reliance on documentation, and there is a scarcity of developers working with ClickHouse, which hinders growth. If ClickHouse were more user-friendly and technically feasible, it would likely see greater expansion in usage.
SS
Research and Development Project Manager at Sixense Monitoring
Efficient data storage with reliable and easy management
We are working on monitoring software that involves making a lot of measurements with sensors. We store all the data in Firebird, which is why we use It primarily for data storage It's difficult to describe how it has improved our organization because we have been using Firebird for a very long…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 has reduced our storage cost and improved our 99th percentile latency by 40%."
"There is no better option than ClickHouse in all OLAP-based databases, so I think it is best to use ClickHouse in that regard."
"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."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."
"ClickHouse has positively impacted my organization, as there was an entire exercise done on which database we were supposed to use for solving our problems, and we found ClickHouse was the one performing the best, which is when we adopted it."
"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"The product was easy to use."
"I find the ease of deployment to be the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"It helps us in detecting all kinds of problems in the code, such as bad quality, unclear code, or any violation in the code or best practices."
"I like Firebird because it's very lightweight; it's very light and powerful, and I can do everything that I can with MS SQL Server and Oracle with Firebird, with very easy deployment on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows and great integration capabilities."
"We are satisfied with Firebird SQL, and we will keep on using it."
"Robustness is the absolutely main feature."
"I appreciate the fact that, once the database is embedded, it doesn't need to be administered, and removes the requirement for a specific server."
"I like that we don't have to pay external fees to migrate this data. So, we are looking to relocate from Postgres or EDB."
 

Cons

"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."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that it is very expensive—ClickHouse is the most expensive option."
"ClickHouse could be improved with self-hosting capabilities and better documentation for how to host it at scale."
"ClickHouse could be improved further in several areas."
"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."
"We would like to have fuzzy search capabilities in ClickHouse like we had with Kibana because there are scenarios where we cannot search keywords fuzzily in ClickHouse, whereas Elasticsearch allows that, and in such cases, Elasticsearch outperforms ClickHouse."
"Additionally, delays are experienced when trying to delete databases with corrupt data, taking too much time and causing major outages, which necessitate contacting multiple teams across continents for resolution."
"On large databases, we have some difficulties."
"This solution isn't very user-friendly, or intuitive, which could be improved when it is developed."
"They need to be more reactive and fast. Sometimes, they take too long to resolve some tickets."
"There aren't a lot of people using this solution — it's not very popular in the marketplace."
"It would be good to have more automation and integration with the tools from other vendors."
"Firebird SQL's performance has slowed since Firebird SQL 3 or 3.5 versions, where they developed over-the-wire encryption."
"Technical support and performance could be better. We have some problems with this solution, but we don't know if the problem is with the database or the configuration. For example, sometimes, the users can't access the database."
"I'd rate the solution five or six out of ten for the possibilities it has currently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool is open-source."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"The tool is free."
"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."
"I was using the free version of Firebird SQL."
"The tool is open source."
"It's open-source and free."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is freely available."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution, which means it is a free product."
"There is a yearly maintenance fee for the use of the solution."
"We are using the free solution, so there is no cost involved."
"There is no licensing cost for this solution, as it is open-source."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was such that the setup costs were just my own bandwidth, while licensing and pricing were done by other members of the team so it was abstract...
What needs improvement with ClickHouse?
ClickHouse can be improved on the documentation side, and there is one small constraint that is mentioned in ClickHouse documentation, which is a partition limit of ten thousand that we hit, so if ...
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
My main use case for ClickHouse is data ingestion and for its OLAP properties, as we had use cases where database locks were slowing us down and because ClickHouse does not have that, we chose to u...
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 needs improvement with Firebird SQL?
We would like to improve the management of very large databases. We have databases up to three or four terabytes, and it's not so easy to manage such large databases.
What is your primary use case for Firebird SQL?
We are working on monitoring software that involves making a lot of measurements with sensors. We store all the data in Firebird, which is why we use It primarily for data storage.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Elekt Labs, Streamsoft, wobe-systems GmbH, DRB Systems, Moscow City Hospital #31
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. Firebird SQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.