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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 solution's most valuable part revolves around data management, which can be seen in its audit features and performance."
"Comparing with other database management systems that I tried in other companies, SQL Server is quite easy to install, configure, and maintain."
"It's the right tool for production-ready or enabled databases."
"Very pleasing and satisfying experience."
"The AlwaysOn feature has ensured 100% database availability, even when one of the servers is down without any performance issues for the end user."
"I use the menu on the management view credit section to get information from the database."
"I like that it's very easy to use, and Veeam is excellent. There are tons of experts and writers in the area now, and we don't find the same for other databases."
"To others who are interested in using this solution, I would say go for it."
 

Cons

"The solution should have a more user-friendly user interface."
"Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search."
"Security is an issue. This is an area that needs to be improved."
"The way SQL Server pivots data could be improved. For example, I would like built-in comma-separated pivot and unpivot functions."
"If there wasn't Stack Overflow, that would be a problem. But luckily there are also other resources on the web which we can use to help ourselves. Just depending on Microsoft support it would not be so great."
"In the next release, I would like to see a better user interface and a familiar syntax."
"The solution is lacking a compound index for comparing values."
"CAL licenses should cost less. Microsoft usually prices high for client access licenses. Server plus user client access license (CAL) licensing requires a separate Server license for each server on which the software is installed, plus a user CAL for each user accessing the server."
"From Microsoft -- poor/very expensive, but there are many other helpful resources out there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We pay per second of usage, but there are different offerings of the license."
"I know the SQL Server pricing model, I believe, is based on CPU cores that your database server has, but I don't know what the solution's prices are though."
"SQL Server is a cost-effective solution for a small database."
"Since we are a cloud-based company, there is AWS pricing on top of the SQL Server pricing. The Enterprise Edition can typically sell from around $1000 dollars a month, which is not cheap. Then, there is an additional one-time Windows cost, based on the code, which can go anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 for the license."
"Their options for concurrency and locking are good, as well as their prices."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It costs a lot."
"With recent releases, the Standard Edition (cheaper) SKU has some of the earlier version Enterprise features. SQL Express has some limitations."
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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.