Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

TimescaleDB VS Cortex Project

Compare TimescaleDB VS Cortex Project and see what are their differences

TimescaleDB logo TimescaleDB

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

Cortex Project logo Cortex Project

Horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant, long term Prometheus.
  • TimescaleDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-23
  • Cortex Project Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-04

TimescaleDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    TimescaleDB offers excellent horizontal and vertical scalability, which allows it to handle large volumes of data efficiently. Its architecture is designed to accommodate growth by distributing and efficiently managing data shards.
  • Time-Series Data Optimization
    Specifically optimized for time-series data, TimescaleDB provides features like hypertables and continuous aggregates that speed up queries and optimize storage for time-based data.
  • SQL Compatibility
    As an extension of PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB offers full SQL support, making it familiar to developers and allowing easy integration with existing SQL-based systems and applications.
  • Retention Policies
    TimescaleDB includes built-in data retention policies, enabling automatic management of historical data and freeing up storage by performing automatic data roll-ups or deletes.
  • Integration with the PostgreSQL Ecosystem
    It benefits from PostgreSQL's rich ecosystem of extensions, tools, and optimizations, allowing for versatile use cases beyond just time-series data while maintaining robust reliability and performance.

Possible disadvantages of TimescaleDB

  • Learning Curve
    Although it’s SQL-based, developers might face a learning curve to fully leverage TimescaleDB's time-series specific features such as hypertables and specific optimization techniques.
  • Limited Write Scalability
    While it's scalable, TimescaleDB might face challenges with extremely high-throughput write workloads compared to some NoSQL time-series databases, which are specifically built for such tasks.
  • Dependency on PostgreSQL
    As it operates as a PostgreSQL extension, any limitations and issues in PostgreSQL might directly affect TimescaleDB's performance and capabilities.
  • Complexity in Setup for High Availability
    Setting up TimescaleDB with high availability and distributed systems might introduce complexities, particularly for organizations that are not well-versed in PostgreSQL clustering and replication strategies.
  • Storage Overhead
    The additional storage features add an overhead, which means that while it adds value with its optimizations, users need to manage storage resources effectively, especially in environments with very large datasets.

Cortex Project features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

TimescaleDB videos

Rearchitecting a SQL Database for Time-Series Data | TimescaleDB

More videos:

  • Review - Visualizing Time-Series Data with TimescaleDB and Grafana

Cortex Project videos

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

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TimescaleDB and Cortex Project)
Databases
78 78%
22% 22
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Time Series Database
85 85%
15% 15
NoSQL Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare TimescaleDB and Cortex Project

TimescaleDB Reviews

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...
4 Best Time Series Databases To Watch in 2019
The Guardian did a very nice article explaining on they went from MongoDB to PostgresSQL in the favor of scaling their architecture and encrypting their content at REST. As you can tell, big companies are relying on SQL-constraint systems (with a cloud architecture of course) to ensure system reliability and accessibility. I believe that PostgresSQL will continue to grow, so...
Source: medium.com
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
TimescaleDB If on the other hand you are storing time series data in MongoDB, then TimescaleDB might be a good fit.
Source: www.percona.com

Cortex Project Reviews

We have no reviews of Cortex Project yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Cortex Project might be a bit more popular than TimescaleDB. We know about 6 links to it since March 2021 and only 5 links to TimescaleDB. 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.

TimescaleDB mentions (5)

  • Ask HN: Does anyone use InfluxDB? Or should we switch?
    (:alert: I work for Timescale :alert:) It's funny, we hear this more and more "we did some research and landed on Influx and ... Help it's confusing". We actually wrote an article about what we think, you can find it here: https://www.timescale.com/blog/what-influxdb-got-wrong/ As the QuestDB folks mentioned if you want a drop in replacement for Influx then they would be an option, it kinda sounds that's not what... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Best small scale dB for time series data?
    If you like PostgreSQL, I'd recommend starting with that. Additionally, you can try TimescaleDB (it's a PostgreSQL extension for time-series data with full SQL support) it has many features that are useful even on a small-scale, things like:. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Quick n Dirty IoT sensor & event storage (Django backend)
    I have built a Django server which serves up the JSON configuration, and I'd also like the server to store and render sensor graphs & event data for my Thing. In future, I'd probably use something like timescale.com as it is a database suited for this application. However right now I only have a handful of devices, and don't want to spend a lot of time configuring my back end when the Thing is my focus. So I'm... Source: over 3 years ago
  • How fast and scalable is TimescaleDB compare to a NoSQL Database?
    I've seen a lot of benchmark results on timescale on the web but they all come from timescale.com so I just want to ask if those are accurate. Source: over 3 years ago
  • The State of PostgreSQL 2021 Survey is now open!
    Ryan from Timescale here. We (TimescaleDB) just launched the second annual State of PostgreSQL survey, which asks developers across the globe about themselves, how they use PostgreSQL, their experiences with the community, and more. Source: about 4 years ago

Cortex Project mentions (6)

  • Top 10 Prometheus Alternatives in 2024 [Includes Open-Source]
    Cortex is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant prometheus alternative. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Scaling Prometheus with Thanos
    There are many Projects like Thanos, M3, Cortex, and Victoriametrics. But Thanos is the most popular among these. Thanos addresses these issues with Prometheus and is the ideal solution for scaling Prometheus in environments with extensive metrics or multiple clusters where we require a global view of historical metrics. In this blog, we will explore the components of Thanos and will try to simplify its... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Self hosted log paraer
    Now if its more metric data you are using and want to do APM, prometheus is your man https://prometheus.io/, want to make prometheus your full time job? Deploy cortex https://cortexmetrics.io/, honorable mention in the metrics space, Zabbix, https://www.zabbix.com/ I've seen use cases of zabbix going way beyond its intended use its a fantastic tool. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Is anyone frustrated with anything about Prometheus?
    Yes, but also no. The Prometheus ecosystem already has two FOSS time-series databases that are complementary to Prometheus itself. Thanos and Mimir. Not to mention M3db, developed at Uber, and Cortex, then ancestor of Mimir. There's a bunch of others I won't mention as it would take too long. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Centralized solution for Prometheus?
    You can use the Remote write feature to send to a centralized location. It would have to be scalable like Cortex https://cortexmetrics.io/. Source: about 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing TimescaleDB and Cortex Project, you can also consider the following products

InfluxData - Scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics.

Thanos.io - Open source, highly available Prometheus setup with long term storage capabilities.

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

VictoriaMetrics - Fast, easy-to-use, and cost-effective time series database

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

IRONdb - Circonus delivers Machine Data Intelligence for the most demanding use cases. Collect, store, manage, and analyze IoT and monitoring data at unprecedented volume and frequency.