InfluxDB vs SQLite comparison

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InfluxDB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

SQLite and InfluxDB operate in distinct niches; SQLite is a lightweight relational database ideal for embedded applications, while InfluxDB is optimized for high-performance, time-series data management. InfluxDB holds the advantage in handling time-series data, while SQLite is favored for its simplicity and minimal overhead.

Features: SQLite features a self-contained, serverless architecture suitable for applications needing an embedded database, with a small footprint ideal for mobile and IoT uses. InfluxDB offers powerful time-series data handling including specialized query languages and high ingestion rates, supporting high availability and clustering.

Room for Improvement: SQLite could improve its scalability and better support complex queries. It also lacks built-in clustering capabilities, limiting its use in larger, distributed systems. InfluxDB might enhance its user learning curve by simplifying its setup process and reducing its resource footprint. Further improvements could be made in extending support for other non-time-series data types.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SQLite deployment requires minimal setup without a separate server process, making integration straightforward. It has low customer service needs due to its simplicity. InfluxDB's deployment is more complex, especially for scaling and clustering, but offers extensive community and commercial support.

Pricing and ROI: SQLite offers cost-effectiveness with no mandatory licensing fees, ensuring high ROI for lightweight database needs. InfluxDB generally follows a subscription model, with higher initial costs but delivers significant ROI for environments needing real-time processing of time-series data.

To learn more, read our detailed InfluxDB vs. SQLite Report (Updated: June 2025).

InfluxDB vs. SQLite

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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

InfluxDB

Ranking in Open Source Databases

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Non-Relational Databases (2nd), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (24th), NoSQL Databases (3rd)

SQLite

Ranking in Open Source Databases

12th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded Database (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of InfluxDB is 4.0%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQLite is 5.2%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

DeepakR

Site Reliability Engineer(Observability) at Sapiens

An open-source database that can be used to insert data

InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times.

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Neeraj Tiwari

Student at Queens University Belfast

Pretty easy to execute my SQL queries but issues while uploading and importing my dataset

It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries. Since I was a beginner, it was comfortable for me to learn SQL using SQLite. However, when I used it for my professional work and for my assignments, I found some complications. Maybe I'm not proficient with it, that's why. The main benefit for me was learning. Since I was new to SQL, SQLite helped me understand how to work with structured data.

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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

"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."

"The platform operates very quickly. It is easy to configure, connect, and query and integrates seamlessly with Grafana."

"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."

"While I would rate InfluxDB a ten on a scale of one to ten, users should be thoughtful about matching the engine to their specific needs."

"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."

"In our case, it started with a necessity to fill the gap that we had in monitoring. We had very reactive monitoring without trend analysis and without some advanced features. We were able to implement them by using a time series database. We are able to have all the data from applications, logs, and systems, and we can use a simple query language to correlate all the data and make things happen, especially with monitoring. We could more proactively monitor our systems and our players' trends."

"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."

"The most valuable features of InfluxDB are the documentation and performance, and the good plugins metrics in the ecosystem."

More InfluxDB pros

"It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries."

"SQLite’s most valuable feature is the ability to store granular-level backups of databases."

"I haven't encountered any problems in my use cases. So, it has been a stable product for me."

"Sometimes, you want data to persist within the app even when there's no internet connectivity. To avoid showing blank screens, we can use SQLite to store data locally and then sync it with the cloud database when connectivity is restored."

"The product is lightweight and highly scalable."

"I use Flutter Technology with the JSF plugin."

Cons

"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."

"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."

"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."

"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."

"InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times."

"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."

"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."

More InfluxDB cons

"A potential drawback is that the database file stored within the application's local storage could be accessible to users."

"Compared to other tools, the performance was less effective than that of Microsoft Access."

"There are some difficulties on the server side. When syncing data with databases like SQL Server or Oracle, SQLite requires a kind of double effort."

"The performance could be better."

"It could have a user-friendly GUI and better intelligence features."

"I primarily use SQLite for small-scale applications due to its limitations in storing large amounts of data. For larger-scale projects, I typically opt for MySQL or other alternatives. Storing a large number of dates in SQLite can significantly impact its performance."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."

"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."

"The tool is an open-source product."

"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."

"It's not expensive."

"The tool is open-source."

"It's a good value."

"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...

What needs improvement with InfluxDB?

It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster. Replicating data for on-prem development and testing is difficult. Having a SQL abstrac...

What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is the main component in our large enterprise-scale streaming data application for maritime vessels. We collect position data from vessels around the coast once per second, put it on a Kaf...

What do you like most about SQLite?

It was a bit easy to use compared to other tools. It's simple. I found it pretty easy to execute my SQL queries.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQLite?

It is not expensive.

What needs improvement with SQLite?

There were some complications. For example, you have to upload the dataset into SQLite, and once it's uploaded, you might find difficulties working with it.

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Cassandra vs InfluxDB

Compared 5% of the time

Firebird SQL vs SQLite

Compared 43% of the time

LanceDB vs SQLite

Compared 9% of the time

DuckDB vs SQLite

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

InfluxDB

Download InfluxDB product report

Download SQLite product report

Overview

InfluxDB is open-source software that helps developers and enterprises alike to collect, store, process, and visualize time series data and to build next-generation applications. InfluxDB provides monitoring and insight on IoT, application, system, container, and infrastructure quickly and easily without complexities or compromises in scale, speed, or productivity.

InfluxDB has become a popular insight system for unified metrics and events enabling the most demanding SLAs. InfluxDB is used in just about every type of industry across a wide range of use cases, including network monitoring, IoT monitoring, industrial IoT, and infrastructure and application monitoring.

InfluxDB offers its users:

Infrastructure and application monitoring: Collect, process, and analyze real-time data from edge devices to help optimize distributed infrastructure.

IoT monitoring and analytics: InfluxDB is designed to store large volumes of time series data and quickly perform real-time analysis on that data. Gain insights from all the sensor data and use the collected data to create and perform automated tasks.

Network monitoring: Manage responsive and high-performing networks with widely distributed resources.

InfluxDB Benefits

There are several benefits to using InfluxDB . Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

APIs and ready toolset: InfluxDB can be accessed via a set of powerful tools enabling users to get started quickly, with less programming required. This includes a REST API, extensive client libraries, a wide variety of open-source integrations, and Flux - a functional data scripting language for querying, analysis, and events. The InfluxDB API can be used to write data from edge devices to the InfluxDB instance

Time series engine: Get any data - events, logs, traces - from any edge device - systems, sensors, queues, databases, and networks. This data is stored in a powerful and high-performing engine capable of ingesting millions of data points per second.

Community: InfluxDB has a large community of cloud and open-source developers ready to assist users.

Ready-made templates: Use InfluxDB Templates, a set of tools with a packager and other ready monitoring solutions. These tools allow users to share their monitoring expertise with coworkers and other community members around the world. The Templates gallery offers available templates for some of the most popular tools and applications.

Enhanced UI: InfluxDB’s UI includes an explorer, dashboarding tools, and a script editor. Use it to easily browse the collected metric and event data and apply common transformations. The dashboarding tool comes with a variety of visualization options that help users view insights from the data. The script editor assists users to quickly master Flux with easily accessible examples, auto-completion, and real-time syntax checking.

Reviews from Real Users

InfluxDB stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its flexible integration options and its data aggregation feature.

Shalauddin Ahamad S., a software engineer at a tech services company, notes, “The most valuable features are aggregating the data and the integration with Grafana for monitoring.”

InfluxData

SQLite is an open-source, serverless, reliable, and flexible, SQL database engine. It is particularly favored in the realm of embedded database solutions and small to medium-sized projects. Unlike traditional database systems that operate on a client-server model, SQLite is a serverless database engine, meaning it runs directly within the application it powers. This unique architecture makes SQLite an ideal choice for applications where simplicity, efficiency, and minimal configuration are paramount.

SQLite is an embedded database engine, which means it operates directly within the application that uses it, without requiring a separate server process. It is designed to be cross-platform, supporting multiple operating systems, and is is compatible with a wide range of programming languages, such as C, C++, Python, Java, and more. This makes it highly portable and suitable for a wide range of applications, from mobile devices to desktop software and web applications.

The key advantages of SQLite is its reliability, the lightweight nature and efficient performance. It has a small footprint, typically requiring only a few megabytes of disk space, and can operate entirely in memory if needed. It is designed to be reliable and robust, with built-in features such as atomic commit and rollback, which ensure data integrity even in the event of system crashes or power failures. Finally, the SQLite solution requires no configuration or setup, making it easy to use and deploy. It can be embedded directly into applications without the need for complex installation or configuration procedures.

SQLite Functionality

SQL Compliance: SQLite supports a substantial portion of the SQL standard, including features like transactions, triggers, views, and indexes.
File-based Storage: SQLite stores its entire database as a single cross-platform file on the host machine's file system.
ACID Compliance: SQLite fully supports ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transactions, ensuring data consistency and integrity in concurrent access scenarios.

SQLite is an open-source project distributed under a public domain license, which means it can be used, modified, and distributed freely, without any licensing costs or restrictions.

To summarize, SQLite is widely used in various applications, including web browsers (e.g., Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome), mobile applications (e.g., Android, iOS), embedded systems, and desktop software. Its simplicity, portability, and efficiency make it a popular choice for developers who require a lightweight and reliable database solution, especially in resource-constrained environments or applications with modest data storage needs.

Sample Customers

ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo

Oracle, Bloomberg, Bentley, Mozilla

InfluxDB vs. SQLite