ClickHouse vs MariaDB comparison

ClickHouse and MariaDB are both solutions in the Open Source Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6, while MariaDB is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4. ClickHouse holds a 6.5% mindshare in OSD, compared to MariaDB’s 5.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of MariaDB users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 21 ClickHouse reviews

5,532 Views
2,711 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

MariaDB

Read 61 MariaDB reviews

5,950 Views
3,154 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

MariaDB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

MariaDB and ClickHouse compete as robust database solutions, with ClickHouse having the upper hand in analytical query performance and scalability, while MariaDB is favored for general ease of use and cloud-based integration.

Features: MariaDB offers scalability, ease of setup, and strong replication, making it a preferred choice for telephony and analytics workloads. It also excels in data integration and select query performance. ClickHouse stands out with its columnar storage, making it particularly efficient for complex queries and large datasets. It offers excellent aggregation capabilities and low-latency performance, outperforming traditional databases in speed and scalability.

Room for Improvement: MariaDB could enhance management and integration, focusing on clustering technologies, redundancy, and support for materialized views. There is a need for advanced features similar to those offered by Oracle. ClickHouse has room for improvement in documentation and user-friendliness for beginners, along with addressing installation complexity and supporting high-frequency small writes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MariaDB is known for its straightforward deployment in both on-premises and cloud environments, supported by a strong open-source community, though lacking direct support for the free version. ClickHouse offers deployment flexibility but requires more technical expertise, especially in cloud environments. MariaDB's customer service is community-driven, while ClickHouse's official support is satisfactory yet self-reliant for community editions.

Pricing and ROI: Both MariaDB and ClickHouse have open-source versions, making them cost-effective with no direct licensing fees. MariaDB's enterprise version is cheaper than Oracle, offering good ROI on licenses. ClickHouse users benefit from lower hosting and operational costs, particularly when self-hosted, though the cloud version pricing can be high. Both provide strong ROI, with exact costs and benefits varying based on deployment and usage needs.

To learn more, read our detailed ClickHouse vs. MariaDB Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. MariaDB

April 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

6.8

ClickHouse boosts productivity with cost and time savings, enhancing database performance and developer efficiency significantly despite unspecified savings.

Sentiment score

6.3

MariaDB users experience varied ROI, with savings and efficiency gains, plus benefits like support, flexibility, and open-source enhancements.

I estimate we save four to five hours per person per week due to this efficiency, translating to around 20 to 25 hours saved monthly for each individual.

Raviteja Narayandasbangaru

AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We could reduce the amount of employees needed when we migrated to ClickHouse Cloud.

reviewer2784735

Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

With ClickHouse, we didn't need to spend much on resources, cutting costs by around 25 to 30%.

Aditya Aditya

Associate software architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.6

ClickHouse offers knowledgeable support, with cloud users praising responsiveness, while community resources aid open-source user self-reliance.

Sentiment score

6.3

MariaDB offers responsive support, but users often rely on in-house teams and community resources due to strong documentation.

If more timely support could be provided during critical issues, situations could have been resolved much more quickly, saving considerable time.

reviewer2785038

Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

When we faced any challenges, the ClickHouse support team provided helpful resolutions.

Raviteja Narayandasbangaru

AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We utilize AVN ClickHouse, which is effectively managed by AVN, providing bug fixes and developing new functionalities along with architecture reviews.

Aswini Atibudhi

Distinguished AI Leader at Walmart Global Tech at Walmart

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

They came and tuned our queries with one-to-one assistance.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

Compared to MongoDB, there are some platform deficiencies, but the support team shouldn't bear that burden.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

ClickHouse is praised for its scalability, efficiently handling large data volumes in distributed systems with solutions like AWS and Kubernetes.

Sentiment score

6.9

MariaDB is scalable, reliable for various applications, but may require configuration and enhancements for large datasets and cloud integration.

The vertical scalability is impressive, with high insert throughput, allowing millions of rows per second with low latency.

Raviteja Narayandasbangaru

AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

ClickHouse is highly scalable.

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

The scalability of ClickHouse is great.

reviewer2785134

Senior Software Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

ClickHouse offers stable, efficient performance for large data sets, with some concerns about memory use and development inconsistencies.

Sentiment score

7.8

MariaDB is highly rated for stability, handling thousands without downtime, needing minimal maintenance but precise tuning for large instances.

I can confidently say that it is very consistent and stable even when handling high volume loads and real-time streaming analytics across financial and operational domains.

Raviteja Narayandasbangaru

AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

ClickHouse handles large volumes of data efficiently.

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

ClickHouse is stable, as we did not encounter stability issues in production.

reviewer2784981

Software Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

We haven't found issues with the stability of MariaDB.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Room For Improvement

ClickHouse users seek improved documentation, integration enhancements, better cloud pricing, and solutions for operational complexity and SQL compatibility issues.

MariaDB needs better integration, scalability, UI, stability, support, replication, compatibility, and cost-effective licensing to enhance enterprise functionality.

Another challenge is the lack of robust support for transactional databases, which limits its use as a primary database.

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

ClickHouse should be able to import data from other types of sources like Parquet and Iceberg tables and all the new upcoming data formats.

Hitaish Kumar

Senior Software Engineer at Karvy Fintech

My experience with ClickHouse's documentation is that it needs improvement; I think it can be made more beginner-friendly, while the community support is really good.

reviewer2784735

Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features are not available in MariaDB.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Setup Cost

ClickHouse offers flexible, cost-efficient pricing with open-source and cloud options, though lacks Windows support, balancing cost and performance.

Enterprise buyers praise MariaDB for its cost-effectiveness and flexibility, often choosing the free version to avoid licensing fees.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that it is very expensive—ClickHouse is the most expensive option.

reviewer2784735

Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

ClickHouse is open source with no hidden fees, offering cost-effective data management.

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

I found ClickHouse's pricing to be efficient in comparison to other services such as Redshift.

Raviteja Narayandasbangaru

AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Valuable Features

ClickHouse provides fast, scalable data storage and retrieval with seamless integration, open-source flexibility, and strong community support.

MariaDB is a reliable, scalable open-source database excelling in performance, compatibility, and support for diverse environments and analytics.

ClickHouse has reduced our storage cost and improved our 99th percentile latency by 40%.

Hitaish Kumar

Senior Software Engineer at Karvy Fintech

For cost optimization, after deploying the cluster on-premises and using S3 Express, approximately 5x cost savings were achieved on data storage.

reviewer2785038

Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

ClickHouse positively impacted our organization by absorbing the whole logging system without hassle, storing logs for six months efficiently.

Aditya Aditya

Associate software architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the ClickHouse report

Encryption is available in MariaDB, so we are secure for transmitting data without concern about moving over networks.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

Configuration, setup, and schema design are good features in MariaDB.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Categories and Ranking

ClickHouse

Ranking in Open Source Databases

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (7th)

MariaDB

Ranking in Open Source Databases

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 6.5%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 5.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ClickHouse	6.5%
MariaDB	5.8%
Other	87.7%

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

reviewer2785038

Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 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.

Read full review

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

Has supported web application data needs but requires design adjustments to manage complex queries efficiently

Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues. For small and medium-size volume, it is pretty good. If it goes beyond certain data and complex queries, we see performance issues. We tried the advanced replication feature between different regions, replicating data specifically residing on MariaDB to two different regions of MariaDB data, and there were some technical snags in terms of slowness and longer processing time. Point-in-time recovery in MariaDB is good for small databases. When data volume increases beyond 5 GB or 10 GB per day or runs into double-digit GBs, we found some performance issues. For data below 10 GB, it works fine. Performance is the primary focus area for MariaDB, particularly during transactions or complex query jobs where slow performance is observed. MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	26

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...

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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 ...

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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...

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What do you like most about MariaDB?

The integration with other products is seamless.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?

MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data. The cost depends on the volume of data and different features enabled during configuration, such as backup ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with MariaDB?

Sometimes, complex queries that were supported in Oracle are not available in MariaDB. Advanced indexing is not available. Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features a...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

PostgreSQL vs MariaDB

Compared 11% of the time

MySQL vs MariaDB

Compared 10% of the time

SQL Server vs MariaDB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon RDS on Outposts vs MariaDB

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

May 2026

Download ClickHouse product report

Buyer's Guide

MariaDB

April 2026

Download MariaDB product report

Overview

ClickHouse is renowned for its speed, scalability, and real-time query performance. Its compatibility with SQL standards enhances flexibility while enabling integration with popular tools.

ClickHouse leverages a column-based architecture for efficient data compression and real-time analytics. It seamlessly integrates with tools like Kafka and Tableau and is effective in handling large datasets due to its cost-efficient aggregation capabilities. With robust data deduplication and strong community backing, users can access comprehensive documentation and up-to-date functionality. However, improvements in third-party integration, cloud deployment, and handling of SQL syntax differences are noted, impacting ease-of-use and migration from other databases.

What features make ClickHouse outstanding?

Speed and Scalability: Enables rapid deployment and scalability, particularly on Kubernetes.
SQL Compatibility: Aligns with SQL standards for flexible database management.
Column-based Structure: Offers efficient data compression and quick query performance.
Integration Support: Works with Kafka, Tableau, and other popular platforms.
Data Deduplication: Manages complex data duplication efficiently.

What benefits should users consider?

Cost-Efficiency: Reduces expenses while managing large datasets effectively.
Real-Time Analytics: Provides fast data processing for real-time insights.
Flexibility: Offers multiple integration points and compatibility options.
Robust Documentation: Backed by an active development community, ensuring comprehensive support.

ClickHouse is deployed in sectors like telecommunications for passive monitoring and is beneficial for data analytics, logging Clickstream data, and as an ETL engine. Organizations harness it for machine learning applications when combined with GPT. With the ability to be installed independently, it's an attractive option for avoiding cloud service costs.

ClickHouse

MariaDB is a robust database solution known for its scalability, speed, and user-friendliness. It supports seamless integration and provides reliable performance in handling large datasets, offering strong community backing alongside its open-source nature.

MariaDB is renowned for efficiently managing large databases and complex relationships while being stable and easy to integrate. With advanced features like replication, encryption, and SQL compatibility, it offers fast query processing. Its straightforward installation and management processes facilitate seamless enterprise integrations and ensure high performance in real-time data scenarios. However, enhancements in enterprise integration, clustering, and scalability are necessary. Addressing challenges with complex queries, security, and user experience would be advantageous, alongside offering robust technical support and a competitive pricing model.

What are the key features of MariaDB?

Scalability: Handles large databases and complex relationships effectively.
User-Friendliness: Offers easy integration and management.
Speed: Provides fast query processing using multi-core processing efficiently.
Advanced Features: Includes replication, encryption, and SQL compatibility.
Open-Source: Encourages strong community support and continuous improvement.

What benefits should users consider when evaluating MariaDB?

Performance: High performance in real-time data processing.
Integration: Seamless integration with enterprise systems and SaaS applications.
Community Support: Strong open-source community for troubleshooting and development.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing compared to proprietary databases.
Compatibility: MySQL compatibility for easier transitions and migrations.

MariaDB is extensively utilized in backend support for cloud telephony platforms, ERP systems, and financial software, being crucial for web application development and data storage. Entities favor its compatibility with MySQL for complex join queries and its support for structured data management in SaaS applications.

MariaDB

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. MariaDB

April 2026

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