No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
39th
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) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 10.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.4%
kdb+0.9%
Other88.7%
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+."
"However, Microsoft SQL servers are a very trusted product."
"The solution is easy to use and provides similar features to other competitors."
"We use it for our on-premises solutions, virtual servers and SSAS, SSRS packages. Also, our applications are .NET based, so it made to use it."
"SQL Server is quite user-friendly, and I have experience with Oracle and PostgreSQL, so out of three, I like SQL Server a lot."
"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."
"SSAS is the most interesting feature to organize the data and let the users play with it."
"The pricing of the solution is okay. It's less expensive than Oracle, for example."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
 

Cons

"The solution should have a more user-friendly user interface."
"I have experience working with SQL Server 2016 and older versions, including handling JSON data. Initially, I found the JSON capabilities to be less helpful, but over time, they have greatly improved. SQL Server now offers extensive capabilities for working with various forms of data, particularly when communicating with text, such as in JSON format. I particularly prefer working with these features on Azure, as it provides numerous possibilities, especially in the field of business intelligence (BI). Additionally, the serverless platform offered by Azure is highly beneficial and makes tasks easier to manage."
"The scalability and the high availability feature can be expanded or improved. Currently, there is a limitation on scalability. A feature similar to the Oracle Diagnostic feature can be included to provide a better user experience."
"Problems include - is it an MS product? Then licensing can be a pain if they do an audit."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
"Reloading all the data in a database can cause potential data loss especially when the size of database is large."
"The performance needs some improvement and it needs more features integrated into it."
"Running multiple instances on the same box would be beneficial."
"Other than Synapse and the other version of SQL Server, they face some problems while processing the data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution is fine."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"Depending upon your usage, you can use the pay-as-you-go model for a short period of time. For longer projects, we can opt for one-year or a three-year license."
"The pricing from Microsoft is quite expensive compared to Oracle."
"The product’s price depends on the specific server requirements."
"It requires the purchase of a license."
"For smaller companies, they find this solution expensive."
"We didn't have any licensing costs for SQL Server."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Relational Databases Tools solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
44%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
5%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.