Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 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
6th
Ranking in Vector Databases
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Ranking in Vector Databases
9th
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 May 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 3.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 18.0%, down from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Aswini Atibudhi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides real-time data insights with high flexibility and responsive support
The basic challenge for ClickHouse is the documentation, which isn't ideal, but it's mature and stable with more columnar storage, compression, and parallel processing, making it the best for OLAP. 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.
PavithrarajShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced
I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."
"We faced a challenge with deploying ClickHouse onto Kubernetes. Recently, we've been using ClickHouse Cloud, and the main issue is the high cost of the cloud service. The pricing isn't very competitive, especially for startups. I would instead buy a server and self-host if I have enough disk space. Besides that, ClickHouse has done very well, with clear goals and effective execution."
"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."
"The best thing about the tool is that I can set it up on my computer and run queries without depending on the cloud. This is why I use it every day."
"ClickHouse is very easy to use; one of the good features is that it has joins, which were not present in Druid, and Druid was quite expensive, especially with our applications at Sam's Club utilizing ClickHouse very quickly."
"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."
"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."
"If you have a real-time basis, you should take a look at ClickHouse because it works on a vector database, and the querying is super fast compared to traditional databases."
"Postgres is rock solid when deployed according to best practices as documented by the PostgreSQL community. When it's installed correctly, PostgreSQL is an enterprise-grade solution."
"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 performance is good."
"It is very useful for both structured and unstructured data. You can store unstructured and structured data in PostgreSQL. It is easy to use. You can easily manage things through PostgreSQL Admin. It is cost-effective. Its on-premise version is free. It is agnostic of on-premise or cloud. You can install it on the cloud or on-premises. It is available with all clouds, and you can also install it on desktop or Windows Servers."
"It's a useful solution, that can be widely used."
"It is easy to install and easy to manage. There is no license on it, so it is free. There is high compatibility with Oracle, and there are many tools for the migration of data from Oracle to Postgre."
"We managed to reduce the storage space needed to 10% of the original size, without affecting data integrity, and we significantly improved the performance."
 

Cons

"If you join our team, it should be easy for you to use ClickHouse, especially if you are a developer. However, you need to read the documentation and understand the problems you are trying to solve."
"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."
"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."
"The main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."
"The price could be better."
"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."
"PostgreSQL could improve by adding data warehousing tools."
"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."
"PostgreSQL uses high memory compared to its counterparts when a highly demanding load is involved, especially one that makes many concurrent connections to the database."
"The scalability is limited."
"There could be a plugin to distribute the data on servers for the product."
"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."
"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."
"The tool is open-source."
"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."
"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"We do not pay for licensing."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
"Affordable solution."
"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."
"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."
"There is an annual license."
"It is open source. There is no licensing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?
ClickHouse is open source without direct fees, unlike other databases that have hidden fees or restrict hosting to their platforms. The open-source nature of ClickHouse allows for complete flexibil...
What needs improvement with ClickHouse?
A significant area for improvement is the documentation, which is not comprehensive and lacks centralized resources, making it difficult to find information. Additionally, ClickHouse lacks robust s...
What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?
The main use case for ClickHouse is as a data warehouse for handling large volumes of data that exceed the capabilities of traditional databases like Postgres. I use it for creating dashboards and ...
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 PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about ClickHouse vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.