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SQL Server vs kdb+ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

kdb+
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of kdb+ is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.6%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.6%
kdb+0.9%
Other88.5%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin Garg - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President - Financial Services at Evalueserve
An easy-to-deploy solution that can be used for data ingestion and usage
I work for a fintech company where we create several strategies generally built on finance data, which are like one-time series data. We deal with huge bulk data on a daily basis, and we use kdb+ for data ingestion and usage The most valuable feature of kdb+ is the speed at which it returns the…
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution returns data quickly, and data retrieval is fast in kdb+."
"The fact that SQL Server fully integrates within the entire Microsoft ecosystem is a plus."
"It's a very capable, efficient, price-performant OLAP server on which we can build our solutions."
"can extract data from the server and store it in a local data source for BI purposes."
"The scalability of the product is great."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"SQL Server is similar to other Microsoft products, such as BI, they are easy to use. You do not need to have an expensive BD to maintain them. All the useful intuitive features you find in Microsoft solutions you will find in SQL Server."
"This is a great solution for anyone with basic knowledge of DNS who wants to build up a database."
"The main feature of this solution is ease of use."
 

Cons

"The solution should have a more user-friendly user interface."
"SQL Server consumes a lot of resources. You need to keep an eye on the number of resources involved."
"The way SQL Server pivots data could be improved. For example, I would like built-in comma-separated pivot and unpivot functions."
"The performance is not always the best."
"As SQL server could not support the number of connections we desired, we were forced to go with Oracle."
"Access validation rules and expressions need improvement while converting into SQL Server."
"They could improve the solution by allowing more portability between on-premise and the cloud."
"An area for improvement would be the SQL Server process monitoring, which is quite basic and could sustain more information."
"It would definitely be better if SQL Server were free."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"The price of SQL Server is great. In my company, SQL Server is part of the Microsoft Suite, we don't have to pay for any additional license costs, it's quite cost-effective for us."
"We are on a monthly subscription and the price could improve. However, the price has worked out well in some deployments. The problem is you never know what kind of services been installed and you have to be in touch with many people, such as which servers are active or which are not. I did face a couple of issues in terms of subscriptions and the pricing model. They have improved over time."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"Pricing for this product is very reasonable."
"The cost is high and because it's an expensive product, we are in the process of moving towards open-source solutions."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. It is not extremely cheap but also it's not the most expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise118
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UniCredit, AIRBUS
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.