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ClickHouse vs InfluxDB 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 (10th)
InfluxDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Non-Relational Databases (2nd), Network Monitoring Software (27th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (26th), NoSQL Databases (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 5.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of InfluxDB is 4.6%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ClickHouse5.7%
InfluxDB4.6%
Other89.7%
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.
DeepakR - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source database that can be used to insert data
InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"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 a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"ClickHouse is open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."
"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."
"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."
"The solution is very powerful."
"It helps me maintain my solution easily because it is very reliable, so we didn't face any performance issues or crashes regarding our queries; we can get the results very fast."
"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."
"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."
"InfluxDB reduced my time to show data without any interruption, also reducing the number of people needed to manage the project; it is very good to have InfluxDB in my project."
 

Cons

"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."
"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"The main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One area for improvement is the querying language. InfluxDB deprecated FluxQL, which was intuitive since developers are already familiar with standard querying."
"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."
"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."
"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."
"I haven't seen a return on investment; unfortunately, I cannot share relevant metrics such as time saved, fewer employees needed, or money saved."
"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."
"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."
"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."
"The tool is open-source."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"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."
"The tool is free."
"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."
"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."
"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."
"The tool is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

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 InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...
What needs improvement with InfluxDB?
It's pretty much good regarding my use case, but I want to tell you that the interface of InfluxDB is so complex and should be made easier for non-technical people. With InfluxDB, I have to use Gra...
What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?
I have been using InfluxDB for one year for my project, Greenhouse Management using Embedded System, to represent the sensor data on a web dashboard. I have used InfluxDB for storing the data and r...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. InfluxDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.