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ClickHouse VS TiDB

Compare ClickHouse VS TiDB and see what are their differences

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ClickHouse logo ClickHouse

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

TiDB logo TiDB

A distributed NewSQL database compatible with MySQL protocol
  • ClickHouse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-18
  • TiDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26

ClickHouse features and specs

  • High Performance
    ClickHouse is designed for fast processing of analytical queries, often performing significantly faster than traditional databases due to its columnar storage format and optimized query execution.
  • Scalability
    The system is built to handle extensive datasets by scaling horizontally through distributed cluster configurations, making it suitable for big data applications.
  • Real-time Data Ingestion
    ClickHouse supports real-time data ingestion and can immediately reflect changes in query results, which is valuable for use cases requiring instant data processing and analysis.
  • Cost Efficiency
    The open-source nature of ClickHouse makes it a cost-effective option, especially when compared to other commercial data warehouses.
  • SQL Compatibility
    ClickHouse features strong SQL support, which makes it easier for individuals with SQL expertise to transition and use the platform effectively.
  • Compression
    ClickHouse employs advanced compression algorithms that reduce storage requirements and improve query performance.

Possible disadvantages of ClickHouse

  • Complexity in Setup
    Setting up and managing ClickHouse, particularly in a distributed cluster environment, can be complex and require a higher level of expertise compared to some other database systems.
  • Limited Transaction Support
    ClickHouse is optimized for read-heavy operations and analytics but does not support full ACID transactions, which limits its use for certain transactional use cases.
  • Ecosystem and Tooling
    While the ecosystem is growing, ClickHouse still has fewer tools and third-party integrations compared to more mature databases, which can limit its utility in some environments.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running ClickHouse, especially for large datasets, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and CPU resources.
  • Limited User Management
    The platform has relatively basic user management and security features, which may not meet the needs of enterprises with strict compliance and governance requirements.

TiDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    TiDB offers horizontal scalability, allowing you to add more nodes to handle increased loads seamlessly. This makes it suitable for applications expected to grow rapidly.
  • MySQL Compatibility
    TiDB is highly compatible with MySQL, enabling easy migration from MySQL databases and allowing developers to use familiar MySQL tools and syntax.
  • Distributed Architecture
    TiDB's distributed architecture allows it to maintain high availability and reliability, with the ability to continue operating even if some nodes fail.
  • HTAP Capabilities
    TiDB supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP), which lets users perform real-time analytical queries on fresh transactional data without needing separate systems.
  • Strong Consistency
    TiDB ensures strong consistency across distributed transactions, maintaining data integrity without sacrificing performance.

Possible disadvantages of TiDB

  • Complex Deployment
    TiDB's distributed nature can make deployment and management more complex compared to traditional single-node databases, requiring specialized knowledge.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running a TiDB cluster can be resource-intensive, requiring more hardware resources compared to monolithic databases for optimal performance.
  • Evolving Ecosystem
    As a relatively new system, TiDB's surrounding ecosystem is still evolving, potentially leading to a lack of comprehensive ecosystem tools and third-party integrations.
  • Operational Overheads
    Maintaining and monitoring a TiDB cluster can introduce additional operational overheads due to its numerous components and dependencies.
  • Learning Curve
    For teams accustomed to traditional databases, there may be a steep learning curve when adopting TiDB, especially in understanding its distributed features and best practices.

Analysis of ClickHouse

Overall verdict

  • ClickHouse is a powerful and capable columnar DBMS that offers excellent performance for analytical workloads. Its open-source nature allows for flexibility and community-driven improvements, making it a strong option for organizations needing a scalable analytics platform.

Why this product is good

  • ClickHouse is considered a good choice for many use cases due to its high performance in processing large volumes of data and its efficiency in executing complex analytical queries. It is designed to work well with large datasets and provides real-time query capabilities, making it ideal for applications like business intelligence, web analytics, and IoT.

Recommended for

  • Large-scale data analysis
  • Real-time analytics dashboards
  • Businesses needing high-speed query performance
  • Web analytics platforms
  • IoT data processing
  • Financial industry for quick data aggregation

ClickHouse videos

No ClickHouse videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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TiDB videos

+ Add

Hands-On TiDB - Episode 1: A Brief Introduction to TiDB

More videos:

  • Review - TiDB Contributor 学习之路
  • Tutorial - TiDB Binlog Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ClickHouse and TiDB)

ClickHouse

TiDB

Databases
80 80%
Databases
20% 20
Relational Databases
78 78%
Relational Databases
22% 22
Data Warehousing
100 100%
Data Warehousing
0% 0
NoSQL Databases
62 62%
NoSQL Databases
38% 38

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ClickHouse and TiDB

ClickHouse Reviews

Rockset, ClickHouse, Apache Druid, or Apache Pinot? Which is the best database for customer-facing analytics?
‍ClickHouse is an open-source, column-oriented, distributed, and OLAP database that’s very easy to set up and maintain. “Because it’s columnar, it’s the best architectural approach for aggregations and for ‘sort by’ on more than one column. It also means that group by’s are very fast. It’s distributed, replication is asynchronous, and it’s OLAP—which means it’s meant for...
Source: embeddable.com
ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB
Recently, TimescaleDB published a blog comparing ClickHouse & TimescaleDB using timescale/tsbs, a timeseries benchmarking framework. I have some experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse but never got the chance to play with TimescaleDB. Some of the claims about TimescaleDB made in their post are very bold, that made me even more curious. I thought it’d be a great...
Source: pradeepchhetri.xyz
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
ClickHouse may be a great contender for moving analytical workloads from MongoDB. Much faster, and with JSON support and Nested Data Structures, it can be great choice for storing and analyzing document data.
Source: www.percona.com

TiDB Reviews

20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
TiDB is another take on MySQL compatible sharding. This NewSQL engine is MySQL wire protocol compatible but underneath is a distributed database designed from the ground up.
Source: www.percona.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ClickHouse should be more popular than TiDB. It has been mentiond 57 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.

ClickHouse mentions (57)

  • Cross-Compiling Haskell under NixOS with Docker
    I attended the AWS Summit 2025 in Singapore. I enjoyed the event. There were booths from various companies which I found interesting, such as GitLab and ClickHouse. More importantly, I got to meet very interesting people. - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
  • How to Build a Streaming Deduplication Pipeline with Kafka, GlassFlow, and ClickHouse
    ClickHouse: A fast columnar database. It will be our final destination for clean data. And, for simplicity in this tutorial, we'll cleverly use it as our "memory" or state store to remember which events we've already seen recently. - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    In fact, even in the absence of these commercial databases, users can effortlessly install PostgreSQL and leverage its built-in pgvector functionality for vector search. PostgreSQL stands as the benchmark in the realm of open-source databases, offering comprehensive support across various domains of database management. It excels in transaction processing (e.g., CockroachDB), online analytics (e.g., DuckDB),... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Twitter's 600-Tweet Daily Limit Crisis: Soaring GCP Costs and the Open Source Fix Elon Musk Ignored
    ClickHouse: ClickHouse is an open-source columnar database management system designed for high-performance analytics. It excels at processing large volumes of data and offers real-time querying capabilities. It’s probably the world’s fastest real-time data analytics system: ClickHouse Benchmark. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • DeepSeek's Data Breach: A Wake-Up Call for AI Data Security
    Further investigation revealed that these ports provided direct access to a publicly exposed ClickHouse database—entirely unprotected and requiring no authentication. This discovery raised immediate security concerns, as ClickHouse is an open-source, columnar database management system designed for high-speed analytical queries on massive datasets. Originally developed by Yandex, ClickHouse is widely used for... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

TiDB mentions (17)

  • TiDB – cloud-native, distributed SQL database written in Go
    I do want to clarify a few points, on the project page it does provide the following information: > Distributed Transactions: TiDB uses a two-phase commit protocol to ensure ACID compliance, providing strong consistency. Transactions span multiple nodes, and TiDB's distributed nature ensures data correctness even in the presence of network partitions or node failures. > … > High Availability: Built-in Raft... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • TiDB – cloud-native, distributed SQL database written in Go
    Note that TiDB did subject itself to Jepsen testing (relatively) early. Here's their 2019 results: https://jepsen.io/analyses/tidb-2.1.7 The devil is in the details, and anyone who is looking to implement TiDB for data correctness should read through not just this but other currently-open correctness-related Github issues: e.g., https://github.com/pingcap/tidb/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20correctness. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • A MySQL compatible database engine written in pure Go
    Tidb has been around for a while, it is distributed, written in Go and Rust, and MySQL compatible. https://github.com/pingcap/tidb. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2023)
    PingCAP | https://www.pingcap.com | Database Engineer, Product Manager, Developer Advocate and more | Remote in California | Full-time We work on a MySQL compatible distributed database called TiDB https://github.com/pingcap/tidb/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Apache Pegasus – A a distributed key-value storage system
    Isn't TiDB built on top of TiKV?[0] [0]: https://github.com/pingcap/tidb. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ClickHouse and TiDB, you can also consider the following products

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

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

OceanBase - Unlimited scalable distributed database for data intensive transaction & real-time operational analytics workload, with ultra fast performance of maintaining the world record of both TPC-C and TPC-H benchmark tests.

Apache Doris - Apache Doris is an open-source real-time data warehouse for big data analytics.

StarRocks - StarRocks offers the next generation of real-time SQL engines for enterprise-scale analytics. Learn how we make it easy to deliver real-time analytics.

Apache Cassandra - The Apache Cassandra database is the right choice when you need scalability and high availability without compromising performance.

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