ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL comparison

ClickHouse and PostgreSQL are both solutions in the Open Source Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while PostgreSQL is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. ClickHouse holds a 6.5% mindshare in OSD, compared to PostgreSQL’s 14.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of PostgreSQL users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 21 ClickHouse reviews

3,722 Views
1,712 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

PostgreSQL

Read 125 PostgreSQL reviews

7,165 Views
6,305 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

PostgreSQL

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

PostgreSQL and ClickHouse are open-source databases catering to different needs, such as SQL compliance and real-time analytics. PostgreSQL, with its extensive feature set and robust community support, seems to have the upper hand in handling diverse data types and offering strong stability.

Features: PostgreSQL supports scalability for write-intensive tasks, adheres to strict SQL standards, and offers diverse programming language support. ClickHouse efficiently processes real-time data with its columnar storage system and is known for speed and cost-efficiency when managing large datasets.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL struggles with read-only query efficiency and lacks some SQL commands available in other databases like MySQL. It also has slower processing for large records and a smaller community compared to MySQL. ClickHouse needs improved integration with third-party tools and better documentation. It also faces challenges with transactional data handling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PostgreSQL offers flexible deployment options, extensively used in on-premises and hybrid cloud setups, backed by strong community support, though official customer service is limited. ClickHouse is similarly used in varied deployments, noted for its ease of setup by users.

Pricing and ROI: Both PostgreSQL and ClickHouse are open source, entailing no direct licensing costs. PostgreSQL requires investment in training and infrastructure support, yet offers strong ROI. ClickHouse, free and particularly effective when self-hosted, delivers efficient ROI with minimal deployment costs, ideal for budget-conscious projects.

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

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. PostgreSQL

January 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:

Categories and Ranking

ClickHouse

Ranking in Open Source Databases

4th

Ranking in Vector Databases

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Open Source Databases

2nd

Ranking in Vector Databases

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 PostgreSQL is 14.7%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PostgreSQL	14.7%
ClickHouse	6.5%
Other	78.8%

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

Yush Mittal

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.

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Akhilesh Chipre

Senior Assosiate Consultant at Applied Materials

Real-time data capture optimizes database performance but Views create problems

One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads. Replicating the same data daily isn't optimal, so real-time reception improves application performance and reduces latency.

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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 by replacing PostgreSQL, which required complex foreign tables for queries, and with ClickHouse we now have Cube.js for easier data visualization."

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

"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."

"Regarding performance, we tried multiple solutions when Kibana was failing, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and even MongoDB for log ingestion of huge volumes, but ClickHouse outperformed all databases we tested, leading us to choose it for further use cases."

"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."

"There is no better option than ClickHouse in all OLAP-based databases, so I think it is best to use ClickHouse in that regard."

"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."

More ClickHouse pros

"It is a pretty comprehensive database system. Its performance is good, and it does what it is supposed to do. It also integrates very well."

"The database has excellent performance."

"The main value is that it is open source, which means it is free. Our organization has the initiative to go to open source to cut down on cost. Oracle costs us $6 million a year right now, which is killing us, and Postgres costs nothing. So, there is a big push to go to Postgres."

"One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads."

"The solution is scalable, it is very good."

"It is very scalable and comes with a bonus: no licensing issues as you scale with your databases."

"The solution is open-source and free to use."

"The built-in code procedural language is the most valuable. It has a built-in layer for code procedures. Its installation is very easy and quick, and it is free. It is also stable, and its performance is also good."

Cons

"There are some areas where ClickHouse could improve. Specifically, we encountered incompatibilities with its SQL syntax when migrating queries from MySQL or SQL to ClickHouse. This difference in details made it challenging to figure out the exact issues. Additionally, we faced difficulties due to the lack of a proper Django driver for ClickHouse, unlike MySQL, which Django supports out of the box."

"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."

"I chose nine out of ten because, as I mentioned, the improvement side and the ten thousand partition limit created issues that we were hitting quite frequently, but with some schema manipulations we did manage to find a workaround, although that could have been avoided had things been better documented on how we could have solved this problem in a different approach, which took some bandwidth."

"The aggregation capability is a valuable feature. It's highly efficient, allowing us to review entire transaction histories and user activities in the market. We've tried MongoDB, Postgres, MariaDB, and BigQuery, but ClickHouse is the most cost-efficient solution for collecting data at high speeds with minimal cost. We even used ClickHouse Cloud for a month, and it proved to be a great setup, especially for startups looking to handle big data. For example, if there is a need for 2-4 terabytes of data and around 40 billion rows with reasonable computing speed and latency, ClickHouse is ideal. Regarding the real-time query performance of ClickHouse, when using an API server to query it, I achieved query results in less than twenty milliseconds in some of my experiments with one billion rows. However, it depends on the scenario since ClickHouse has limitations in handling mutations. Additionally, one of ClickHouse's strengths is its compression capability. Our experimental server has only four terabytes, and ClickHouse effectively compresses data, allowing us to store large amounts of data at high speed. This compression efficiency is a significant advantage of using ClickHouse."

"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."

"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."

"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."

"In terms of improvements, it's not designed for very frequent small writes, making it less scalable in write-intensive workloads, and it's not flourishing in transactional use cases or when ingesting streaming data, such as batching or buffering, which is something ClickHouse will improve."

More ClickHouse cons

"PostgreSQL could improve by being more user-friendly. In SQL Server they have a studio where you can easily do management but not in this solution."

"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."

"We often find the solution's datetime datatype challenging."

"Sometimes, the views create problems. If you don't have the view, sometimes what happens is you need to have the drivers properly set up for PostgreSQL."

"If it was free to use, it would be the perfect solution."

"I had some issues when I integrated with the Jupyter Notebook."

"As PostgreSQL is an open-source product, you do have to do a bit more configuration and management yourself."

"The interface could be much better."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

"The tool is open-source."

"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."

"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."

"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."

"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."

"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."

"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."

"The community version of Postgre is basically free."

"The solution requires a license."

"The licensing model is good."

"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."

"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."

"We do not pay for licensing."

"It could be much cheaper. If you would like to build an application on Amazon today, PostgreSQL is the standard database with Redshift. If you want other databases, you can add them, but PostgreSQL is the basis of everything. It's a question of money, that's it."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

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	57
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	46

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about PostgreSQL?

It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?

The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

OpenSearch vs ClickHouse

Compared 9% of the time

VictoriaMetrics vs ClickHouse

Compared 8% of the time

Cassandra vs ClickHouse

Compared 7% of the time

MySQL vs ClickHouse

Compared 4% of the time

More ClickHouse Competitors

Firebird SQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 25% of the time

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 10% of the time

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 7% of the time

Chroma vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

PostgreSQL

January 2026

Download PostgreSQL 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

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

PostgreSQL

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

1. Apple 2. Cisco 3. Fujitsu 4. Instagram 5. Netflix 6. Red Hat 7. Sony 8. Uber 9. Cisco Systems 10. Skype 11. LinkedIn 12. Etsy 13. Yelp 14. Reddit 15. Dropbox 16. Slack 17. Twitch 18. WhatsApp 19. Snapchat 20. Shazam 21. SoundCloud 22. The New York Times 23. Cisco WebEx 24. Atlassian 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Heroku 27. GitLab 28. Zalando 29. OpenTable 30. Trello 31. Square Enix 32. Bloomberg

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. PostgreSQL

January 2026

Free Report: ClickHouse vs. PostgreSQL

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