Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Citus Data VS InfluxData

Compare Citus Data VS InfluxData and see what are their differences

Citus Data logo Citus Data

Worry-free Postgres. Built to scale out, Citus distributes data & queries across nodes so your database can scale and your queries are fast. Available as a database as a service, as enterprise software, & as open source.

InfluxData logo InfluxData

Scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics.
  • Citus Data Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-08
  • InfluxData Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

Citus Data features and specs

  • Scalability
    Citus Data can scale out across multiple nodes, allowing for horizontal scaling of PostgreSQL. This facilitates handling large volumes of data and high traffic loads efficiently.
  • Distributed SQL
    It transforms PostgreSQL into a distributed database, enabling users to run parallel queries across a cluster, which can lead to significant performance improvements.
  • PostgreSQL Extension
    As an extension to PostgreSQL, Citus leverages the reliability, robustness, and the rich ecosystem of PostgreSQL, allowing users to continue using familiar PostgreSQL tools and extensions.
  • High Availability
    Citus Data provides high availability and disaster recovery options, ensuring that systems can remain operational even during failures.
  • Flexible Data Distribution
    Citus allows flexible data distribution methods like sharding, enabling efficient query executions by dividing data across nodes based on application-specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of Citus Data

  • Complexity
    Implementing a distributed system with Citus can add complexity to architecture and maintenance compared to a single-node PostgreSQL setup.
  • Use Case Suitability
    Citus is best suited for real-time analytics and multi-tenant applications but might not be the best choice for all types of workloads, particularly those that do not require distributed processing.
  • Cost
    Running a distributed database may result in higher infrastructure and maintenance costs, especially when scaling out to a large number of nodes.
  • Data Replication Overhead
    Although Citus offers high availability, maintaining replicas across multiple nodes can introduce additional overhead and complexity in data consistency management.
  • Learning Curve
    There might be a learning curve for teams to understand distributed systems' paradigms and best practices, especially if they are familiar only with traditional single-node databases.

InfluxData features and specs

  • High Performance
    InfluxData's InfluxDB is designed to handle high write and query loads, making it suitable for time-series data and real-time applications.
  • Open-Source
    The core InfluxDB product is open-source, allowing for transparency, community contributions, and the option to self-host the database.
  • Scalability
    InfluxDB offers horizontal scalability, enabling users to handle increasing volumes of data efficiently through clustering.
  • Built-In Data Processing
    InfluxData offers integrated tools for data processing and scripting, such as Kapacitor for real-time processing and Flux for advanced querying.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    InfluxData provides a comprehensive ecosystem including Telegraf for data collection, Chronograf for visualization, and Kapacitor for alerting and processing.
  • Time-Series Focused
    InfluxDB is optimized for time-series data, offering specialized features like time-based retention policies, continuous queries, and downsampling.
  • Easy Integration
    InfluxDB integrates well with many third-party data visualization and monitoring tools such as Grafana, making it easier to build end-to-end solutions.

Possible disadvantages of InfluxData

  • Complexity
    The comprehensive features and tools in the InfluxData ecosystem can result in a steeper learning curve, especially for novices.
  • Cost
    While the open-source version is free, the enterprise and cloud-hosted versions come with a cost, which can be significant for small to mid-sized businesses.
  • Resource Intensive
    InfluxDB can be resource-intensive, especially under high loads, requiring significant hardware resources for optimal performance.
  • Limited SQL Support
    InfluxDB doesn’t fully support SQL, which can be a hurdle for users accustomed to traditional relational databases. It uses its own query languages like InfluxQL and Flux.
  • Fragmented Documentation
    Some users find the documentation fragmented or lacking in depth, which can make troubleshooting and advanced usage more challenging.
  • Data Backup and Restore
    Managing backups and restores in InfluxDB can be intricate and may require additional effort and tools to ensure data integrity and availability.

Citus Data videos

Scaling Postgres Episode 48 | Microsoft Acquires Citus Data | Split WAL | Maintenance Work Memory

More videos:

  • Review - Scaling a Relational Database for the Cloud age | Citus Data

InfluxData videos

Barbara Nelson [InfluxData] | Best Practices for Data Ingestion into InfluxDB

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Citus Data and InfluxData)
Databases
24 24%
76% 76
Relational Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Time Series Database
0 0%
100% 100
NoSQL Databases
39 39%
61% 61

User comments

Share your experience with using Citus Data and InfluxData. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Citus Data and InfluxData

Citus Data Reviews

20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
Citus While PostgreSQL is a powerful database, and you can store terabytes of data on a single cluster, at a larger scale you will need sharding. If so, consider the Citus PostgreSQL extension, or the DBaaS offering from the same guys.
Source: www.percona.com

InfluxData Reviews

ReductStore vs. MinIO & InfluxDB on LTE Network: Who Really Wins the Speed Race?
Maintaining consistency between multiple databases, like MinIO and InfluxDB, adds a layer of complexity. In our setup, MinIO, used for blob storage, is linked to data points in InfluxDB via its filename. Any inconsistencies or mismatches between the two could potentially result in data loss. Furthermore, we need to query both databases, which is quite inefficient. Lastly,...
Apache Druid vs. Time-Series Databases
We occasionally get questions regarding how Apache Druid differs from time-series databases (TSDB) such as InfluxDB or Prometheus, and when to use each technology. This short post serves to help answer these questions.
Source: imply.io
4 Best Time Series Databases To Watch in 2019
InfluxDB is part of the TICK stack : Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf and Kapacitor. InfluxData provides, out of the box, a visualization tool (that can be compared to Grafana), a data processing engine that binds directly with InfluxDB, and a set of more than 50+ agents that can collect real-time metrics for a lot of different data sources.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, InfluxData seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Citus Data mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Citus Data yet. Tracking of Citus Data recommendations started around Mar 2021.

InfluxData mentions (2)

  • Can i log data into excel/csv using aws?
    I would highly recommend using a proper Time Series Database like QuestDB or InfluxDB to do this instead. You can always export data from wither of those two into Excel if your boss wants it in excel, but it's much easier to do data transformations, create graphs and reports, etc. If you have all the data in a proper database. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How to stream IoT data into Excel
    I would suggest using something better suited to IoT data than ... a spreadsheet. I'd recommend looking at one of the Time Series Databases for this. 1) QuestDB or 2) InfluxDB as these are much better suited to streaming data. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Citus Data and InfluxData, you can also consider the following products

ClickHouse - ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.

TimescaleDB - TimescaleDB is a time-series SQL database providing fast analytics, scalability, with automated data management on a proven storage engine.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

Prometheus - An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.

MariaDB - An enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.