Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Vespa.ai VS ClickHouse

Compare Vespa.ai VS ClickHouse and see what are their differences

Vespa.ai logo Vespa.ai

Store, search, rank and organize big data

ClickHouse logo ClickHouse

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.
  • Vespa.ai Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • ClickHouse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-18

Vespa.ai features and specs

  • Scalability
    Vespa.ai can handle large-scale data processing and real-time analytics, making it suitable for enterprises with vast data sets and high performance requirements.
  • Flexibility
    Offers the ability to deploy applications on various infrastructures whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments, which enhances deployment flexibility.
  • Real-time Data Processing
    Designed to facilitate real-time data ingestion and querying, which supports applications that require fast data retrieval and processing.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source allows developers to customize and contribute to the platform, fostering community engagement and innovation.
  • Advanced Search Capabilities
    Provides a strong search engine that supports natural language processing and complex query handling, which enhances user interactions and data retrieval.

Possible disadvantages of Vespa.ai

  • Complexity
    The platform might have a steep learning curve for beginners due to its advanced features and wide range of capabilities, which can increase the onboarding time.
  • Resource Intensive
    Operating and maintaining the system can be resource-intensive, requiring significant computational resources, which might not be viable for small businesses.
  • Limited Community Support
    Although open-source, the community around Vespa.ai is not as large as some other platforms, potentially leading to slower times in community-driven support and updates.
  • Niche Use Cases
    It is specifically tailored for applications that need large-scale data processing and fast search capabilities, which might be more than necessary for simpler projects.
  • Complex Configuration
    Configuring Vespa.ai can be complex and time-consuming, requiring in-depth understanding and expertise, which can delay implementation.

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.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Vespa.ai and ClickHouse)
Custom Search Engine
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
23 23%
77% 77
Search Engine
100 100%
0% 0
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

Vespa.ai Reviews

We have no reviews of Vespa.ai yet.
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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...
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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ClickHouse should be more popular than Vespa.ai. It has been mentiond 55 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.

Vespa.ai mentions (20)

  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    In cases where a company possesses a strong technological foundation and faces a substantial workload demanding advanced vector search capabilities, its ideal solution lies in adopting a specialized vector database. Prominent options in this domain include Chroma (having raised $20 million), Zilliz (having raised $113 million), Pinecone (having raised $138 million), Qdrant (having raised $9.8 million), Weaviate... - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • Code Search Is Hard
    If you're serious about scaling up, definitely consider Vespa (https://vespa.ai). At serious scale, Vespa will likely knock all the other options out of the park. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Simple Precision Time Protocol at Meta
    Yahoo released their geographic data catalogue under open license and it still lives on as https://whosonfirst.org/ Afaik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper started at Yahoo https://vespa.ai/ was Yahoo's search engine for news and other content product, now spinned off (https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/yahoo-spins-out-vespa-its-search-tech-into-an-independent-company/). - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Are we at peak vector database?
    I think https://vespa.ai/ has the right approach in this space by focusing on being hybrid - vectors alone aren't great for production use cases, it's the combining of vectors+text that lets you use ranking to get meaningful result. (I'm an investor so I'm biased; but it's also the reason why I invested). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Show HN: RAGatouille, a simple lib to use&train top retrieval models in RAG apps
    So what’s the catch? Why is this not everywhere? Because IR is not quite NLP — it hasn’t gone fully mainstream, and a lot of the IR frameworks are, quite frankly, a bit of a pain to work with in-production. Some solid efforts to bridge the gap like Vespa [1] are gathering steam, but it’s not quite there. [1] https://vespa.ai. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
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ClickHouse mentions (55)

  • 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 / 9 days 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 / 23 days 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 / 3 months ago
  • Should You Ditch Spark for DuckDB or Polars?
    Clickhouse also has managed service (https://clickhouse.com/). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • ClickHouse: The Key to Faster Insights
    ClickHouse is rapidly gaining traction for its unmatched speed and efficiency in processing big data. Cloudflare, for example, uses ClickHouse to process millions of rows per second and reduce memory usage by over four times, making it a key player in large-scale analytics. With its advanced features and real-time query performance, ClickHouse is becoming a go-to choice for companies handling massive datasets. In... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Vespa.ai and ClickHouse, you can also consider the following products

Meilisearch - Ultra relevant, instant, and typo-tolerant full-text search API

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

Typesense - Typo tolerant, delightfully simple, open source search 🔍

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Milvus - Vector database built for scalable similarity search Open-source, highly scalable, and blazing fast.

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