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ClickHouse vs Firebird SQL 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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (11th)
Firebird SQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (1st)
 

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 Firebird SQL is 17.7%, down from 20.9% 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.
Nicolae Ancuta - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong event capabilities, allowing raising and displaying events in applications
On large databases, we have some difficulties. It is one of the areas of improvement. For example, under one gigabyte, it works perfectly. Between one and five gigabytes, you might experience some slight performance issues, but they are not significant. Beyond that, you have to index it, tier it, and perform some restore operations to free up space. It requires some effort, but it's manageable. It's quite challenging for the customer. Moreover, migrating from one firewall solution to another was a little bit difficult regarding the backup and restoring the other one. Since we have many databases, we didn't go forward with the latest versions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"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."
"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 open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"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 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."
"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."
"Robustness is the absolutely main feature."
"I find the ease of deployment to be the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The reliability and ease of management are very valuable."
"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 most valuable feature of Firebird SQL is the creation of databases."
"The solution is very useful for stock management."
"The documentation is very well written."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is reliable, offers good performance, and is easy to use."
 

Cons

"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"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."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"Database sharing is a capability that Firebird SQL lacks."
"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."
"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."
"Firebird SQL's performance has slowed since Firebird SQL 3 or 3.5 versions, where they developed over-the-wire encryption."
"It would be good to have more automation and integration with the tools from other vendors."
"In the next release, it should support JSON, XML, and replication with third-party tools."
"It would be interesting if they added functionality with redundancy, reputation, and variability."
"We would like to improve the management of very large databases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"The tool is open-source."
"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."
"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."
"It is okay."
"There is a yearly maintenance fee for the use of the solution."
"It is a public domain system as every customer can install it on their system without paying any license fee."
"It's open-source and free."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution, which means it is a free product."
"We are using the free solution, so there is no cost involved."
"The tool is open source."
"There is no licensing cost for this solution, as it is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.