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ClickHouse vs Firebird SQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 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
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (7th)
Firebird SQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 6.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Firebird SQL is 12.5%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Firebird SQL12.5%
ClickHouse6.4%
Other81.1%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Yush Mittal - PeerSpot reviewer
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Data observability has enabled real‑time analytics and cost savings but needs smoother inserts and cleanup
ClickHouse could be improved concerning data insertion, especially given the high amount of data handled. Constant efforts are made to optimize the features on its own, but with merges and inserts, only a single insert query can be performed allowing for the input of only 100,000 rows per second. It would be beneficial to insert more data and have configurations that are less user-operated. Ideally, ClickHouse would optimize itself to handle these processes automatically, reducing the need to contact the ClickHouse support team for infrastructure optimization. Additionally, delays are experienced when trying to delete databases with corrupt data, taking too much time and causing major outages, which necessitate contacting multiple teams across continents for resolution. The community surrounding ClickHouse also seems limited, providing a reliance on documentation, and there is a scarcity of developers working with ClickHouse, which hinders growth. If ClickHouse were more user-friendly and technically feasible, it would likely see greater expansion in usage.
reviewer1991775 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chapter Lead at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
An open-source database to hold customer data, but its performance should be improved
Firebird SQL significantly improved our data management in many parts of our self-developed ERP system. I rate the solution's performance and speed a six out of ten. Two or three database administrators are needed to maintain the solution. A few years ago, migrating data to or from Firebird SQL was a little bit difficult because the identifier names for tables or stored procedures were limited to 20 to 30 characters. Transferring the structure to Firebird SQL was difficult, but they fixed it in version 3, which was much easier. We are developing software with Delphi, and Delphi is also by Embarcadero. Using InterBase or Firebird SQL databases is very common, and you have some good tools for developing with Firebird SQL. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"ClickHouse has positively impacted my organization, as there was an entire exercise done on which database we were supposed to use for solving our problems, and we found ClickHouse was the one performing the best, which is when we adopted it."
"There is no better option than ClickHouse in all OLAP-based databases, so I think it is best to use ClickHouse in that regard."
"ClickHouse has reduced our storage cost and improved our 99th percentile latency by 40%."
"The main feature of ClickHouse is the optimizer because we had too many records to deduplicate, and the optimizer took this task by itself."
"With ClickHouse, since data is stored in a columnar way, we get aggregation functions that are much faster than transactional databases, such as SQL Server, and the cost efficiency is also much reduced compared to Cosmos DB since we use it on-premises, the cost is nearly cut, which is very useful for us."
"ClickHouse is open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."
"ClickHouse Cloud saves a lot of time for our DevOps engineers since there isn't much deployment involved and everything is served directly, leading to increased efficiency and productivity."
"The most valuable feature of Firebird SQL is the creation of databases."
"It helps us in detecting all kinds of problems in the code, such as bad quality, unclear code, or any violation in the code or best practices."
"I appreciate the fact that, once the database is embedded, it doesn't need to be administered, and removes the requirement for a specific server."
"I like that we don't have to pay external fees to migrate this data. So, we are looking to relocate from Postgres or EDB."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution."
"The product was easy to use."
"We are happy with the event capabilities of Firebird SQL database. We can raise events from it and display them in our application."
"The reliability and ease of management are very valuable."
 

Cons

"ClickHouse could be improved further in several areas."
"There aren't too many improvements I'd suggest for ClickHouse as it covers all my needs. There are just a few technical issues. For example, sometimes, when you want to get unique values and use certain tables, they don't work as expected. But it's not a major problem."
"We would like to have fuzzy search capabilities in ClickHouse like we had with Kibana because there are scenarios where we cannot search keywords fuzzily in ClickHouse, whereas Elasticsearch allows that, and in such cases, Elasticsearch outperforms ClickHouse."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"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."
"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."
"ClickHouse can be improved, and the main challenge I see is its operational complexity."
"The main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."
"It would be good to have more automation and integration with the tools from other vendors."
"In the next release, it should support JSON, XML, and replication with third-party tools."
"On large databases, we have some difficulties."
"It would be interesting if they added functionality with redundancy, reputation, and variability."
"It is not easy to integrate the tool with Visual Studio."
"Technical support and performance could be better. We have some problems with this solution, but we don't know if the problem is with the database or the configuration. For example, sometimes, the users can't access the database."
"Firebird SQL's performance has slowed since Firebird SQL 3 or 3.5 versions, where they developed over-the-wire encryption."
"The main feature I expect is to be able to work with different databases at the same time because that's a wishlist item for me."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"The tool is open-source."
"The tool is free."
"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."
"The tool is open source."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is freely available."
"It's open-source and free."
"It is okay."
"It is a public domain system as every customer can install it on their system without paying any license fee."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution, which means it is a free product."
"I was using the free version of Firebird SQL."
"There is a yearly maintenance fee for the use of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was such that the setup costs were just my own bandwidth, while licensing and pricing were done by other members of the team so it was abstract...
What needs improvement with ClickHouse?
ClickHouse can be improved on the documentation side, and there is one small constraint that is mentioned in ClickHouse documentation, which is a partition limit of ten thousand that we hit, so if ...
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
My main use case for ClickHouse is data ingestion and for its OLAP properties, as we had use cases where database locks were slowing us down and because ClickHouse does not have that, we chose to u...
How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What do you like most about Firebird SQL?
Firebird SQL is an open-source solution.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Elekt Labs, Streamsoft, wobe-systems GmbH, DRB Systems, Moscow City Hospital #31
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. Firebird SQL and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.