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SQL Server vs kdb+ comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

kdb+
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
40th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of kdb+ is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.3%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
kdb+0.9%
Other88.8%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin Garg - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President - Financial Services at Evalueserve
An easy-to-deploy solution that can be used for data ingestion and usage
I work for a fintech company where we create several strategies generally built on finance data, which are like one-time series data. We deal with huge bulk data on a daily basis, and we use kdb+ for data ingestion and usage The most valuable feature of kdb+ is the speed at which it returns the…
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution returns data quickly, and data retrieval is fast in kdb+."
"The ease of administration, in general, is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"I haven't really experienced any issues that required the assistance of technical support."
"The solution is valuable because it seamlessly extracts reports and enables the collection of information from different tables."
"I love the developer version. Microsoft tells you about all the cool things they provided for everybody. You can develop and do anything with it. It's really good to learn. Oracle will not give you that much freedom, and Microsoft really kills it. You don't do anything with it but develop, learn, break, and push it to its limits. If there are problems, you show Microsoft or ask them, "what's going on here?" There is good community support for the developer edition, and that's what I really appreciate. You can teach people about it without limitations. You can have small databases created. You can keep it for a year and then work on it. It's a good thing for learners and developers."
"I use the menu on the management view credit section to get information from the database."
"We've found it to basically be pretty problem-free."
"SQL Server is definitely easy to use, and with the volume that we have, it's also stable."
"I like that it's relatively stable."
 

Cons

"The solution should have a more user-friendly user interface."
"The stability of the solution should be improved in the next release. Sometimes it is great, sometimes it is troublesome. I would also like data conversion and the code pages to be a bit more straightforward."
"There should be more tools and documentation for tuning the performance of Microsoft SQL Server."
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The solution needs to be more secure. It's lacking, compared to, for example, Oracle."
"We had a stability issue with the SSRS component when we deployed it into the production environment."
"I think the scalability of the database could be improved if it could handle increased volumes of data."
"The scalability is not very good because when you add processors to the machine, the price of the license goes up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"There is a license required for this solution and we pay monthly. The price is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"The solution is on a pay-per-use pricing model."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software)."
"We have had to purchase the Enterprise version to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, which is just ridiculous."
"It's a bit expensive."
"The licenses are purchased annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
42%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
5%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise119
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UniCredit, AIRBUS
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.