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ClickHouse vs Firebird SQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (9th)
Firebird SQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 6.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Firebird SQL is 13.6%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Firebird SQL13.6%
ClickHouse6.3%
Other80.1%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Yush Mittal - PeerSpot reviewer
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 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.
reviewer1991775 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chapter Lead at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
An open-source database to hold customer data, but its performance should be improved
Firebird SQL significantly improved our data management in many parts of our self-developed ERP system. I rate the solution's performance and speed a six out of ten. Two or three database administrators are needed to maintain the solution. A few years ago, migrating data to or from Firebird SQL was a little bit difficult because the identifier names for tables or stored procedures were limited to 20 to 30 characters. Transferring the structure to Firebird SQL was difficult, but they fixed it in version 3, which was much easier. We are developing software with Delphi, and Delphi is also by Embarcadero. Using InterBase or Firebird SQL databases is very common, and you have some good tools for developing with Firebird SQL. Overall, I rate the solution a seven 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

"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."
"ClickHouse has positively impacted my organization by replacing PostgreSQL, which required complex foreign tables for queries, and with ClickHouse we now have Cube.js for easier data visualization."
"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."
"Regarding performance, we tried multiple solutions when Kibana was failing, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and even MongoDB for log ingestion of huge volumes, but ClickHouse outperformed all databases we tested, leading us to choose it for further use cases."
"ClickHouse provides responses within a few seconds, typically two to three seconds, which is impressive."
"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."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution and can run on most operating systems, such as Linux, Unix, and Windows."
"The documentation is very well written."
"We are happy with the event capabilities of Firebird SQL database. We can raise events from it and display them in our application."
"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."
"The solution is very useful for stock management."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source 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 find the ease of deployment to be the most valuable aspect of this solution."
 

Cons

"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"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."
"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."
"Too many issues exist for beginners to set up ClickHouse. Many parameters must be configured, such as maximum scatter part settings that determine when writing to a table stops."
"ClickHouse could be improved further in several areas."
"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."
"The pain points I have experienced with ClickHouse include the initial learning curve, which was somewhat challenging."
"ClickHouse could be improved with self-hosting capabilities and better documentation for how to host it at scale."
"The main feature I expect is to be able to work with different databases at the same time because that's a wishlist item for me."
"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."
"It is not easy to integrate the tool with Visual Studio."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable, because the scalability of the performance when using more than one process is not very good."
"The solution could improve by providing partitioning and encryption. It is not at the higher level of database solution but it could be with some upgrades."
"Firebird SQL's performance has slowed since Firebird SQL 3 or 3.5 versions, where they developed over-the-wire encryption."
"This solution isn't very user-friendly, or intuitive, which could be improved when it is developed."
"We would like to improve the management of very large databases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"The tool is open-source."
"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."
"There is no licensing cost for this solution, as it is open-source."
"It is okay."
"It's open-source and free."
"We are using the free solution, so there is no cost involved."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution, which means it is a free product."
"The tool is open source."
"It is a public domain system as every customer can install it on their system without paying any license fee."
"There is a yearly maintenance fee for the use of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
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 do you like most about Firebird SQL?
Firebird SQL is an open-source solution.
 

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: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.