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ClickHouse vs MariaDB 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:
 

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

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.
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
When we faced any challenges, the ClickHouse support team provided helpful resolutions.
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.
Distinguished AI Leader at Walmart Global Tech at Walmart
They came and tuned our queries with one-to-one assistance.
Architect at LTIMindtree
Compared to MongoDB, there are some platform deficiencies, but the support team shouldn't bear that burden.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
 

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.
AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
ClickHouse is highly scalable.
Software Analyst at CLSA
The scalability of ClickHouse is great.
Senior Software Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

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.
AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
ClickHouse handles large volumes of data efficiently.
Software Analyst at CLSA
ClickHouse is stable, as we did not encounter stability issues in production.
Software Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
We haven't found issues with the stability of MariaDB.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
 

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.
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.
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.
Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features are not available in MariaDB.
Architect at LTIMindtree
 

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.
Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
ClickHouse is open source with no hidden fees, offering cost-effective data management.
Software Analyst at CLSA
I found ClickHouse's pricing to be efficient in comparison to other services such as Redshift.
AIML engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
 

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%.
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.
Level 2 Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
ClickHouse positively impacted our organization by absorbing the whole logging system without hassle, storing logs for six months efficiently.
Associate software architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Encryption is available in MariaDB, so we are secure for transmitting data without concern about moving over networks.
Architect at LTIMindtree
Configuration, setup, and schema design are good features in MariaDB.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
 

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)
MariaDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 6.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 6.5%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ClickHouse6.5%
MariaDB6.5%
Other87.0%
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.
AB
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
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise26
 

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...
What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
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 ...
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
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 cert...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.