Overview
ClickHouse is an open-source columnar OLAP database known for extreme query performance. Created at Yandex, it handles billions of rows with sub-second query times. ClickHouse Cloud offers a managed service, while self-hosting remains popular.
Key Features
- ✓ Blazing Speed: Sub-second queries on billions of rows
- ✓ Columnar Storage: Optimized compression and scans
- ✓ Real-time Inserts: Handle high ingestion rates
- ✓ SQL Dialect: Familiar SQL with extensions
- ✓ Materialized Views: Pre-aggregate data
- ✓ Distributed: Scale across nodes
Pros
- 👍 Fastest OLAP performance available
- 👍 Excellent compression ratios
- 👍 True open-source
- 👍 Handles real-time ingestion
- 👍 Great for time-series and logs
- 👍 Active community
Cons
- 👎 Not a general-purpose database
- 👎 JOINs less optimized than analytics
- 👎 Requires operational expertise
- 👎 Schema changes can be tricky
- 👎 Different SQL dialect
Best For
High-performance analytics on massive datasets. Ideal for real-time dashboards, log analytics, and time-series data where query speed is critical.
Founded: 2016 HQ: San Francisco, CA