vioscale
Comparison

ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB

On the evidence we track, ClickHouse leads this comparison with a composite score of 63/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

ClickHouse full profile →TimescaleDB full profile →
Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
★ClickHouse63
TimescaleDB55
Score
Vioscale score
ClickHouse63 / 100medium · 60%
TimescaleDB55 / 100medium · 51%
Pricing
Free tier
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Model
ClickHousecommercial
TimescaleDBcommercial
Price level
ClickHouselow
TimescaleDBlow
Transparent
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✗
Integrations
Count
ClickHouse100
TimescaleDB7
Security
Disclosure policy
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Gdpr
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB–
Hipaa
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Iso27001
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB–
Pci
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB–
Scorecard
ClickHouse4.9
TimescaleDB5.8
Soc2
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Status page
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
ClickHouse1
TimescaleDB0
Github stars
ClickHouse49,464
TimescaleDB23,420
Activity
Commits last 30d
ClickHouse100
TimescaleDB100
Release
Cadence days
ClickHouse–
TimescaleDB13
History
ClickHouse20 items
TimescaleDB20 items
License
Spdx
ClickHouseApache-2.0
TimescaleDB–
Language
Primary
ClickHouseC++
TimescaleDBC
Market
Availability

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for time-series databases. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Query
Query language (SQL / PromQL / InfluxQL-Flux / Graphite)
ClickHouseSQL
TimescaleDBSQL
SQL compatibility
ClickHouseFull SQL
TimescaleDBFull SQL
Ingest
Ingest model
ClickHouseBoth
TimescaleDBBoth
Model
Data model
ClickHouseBoth
TimescaleDBMetrics (labels/tags)
Lifecycle
Downsampling / rollups
ClickHouse-
TimescaleDB-
Retention / TTL
ClickHouse-
TimescaleDB-
Storage
Compression (columnar / delta / Gorilla)
ClickHousecolumnar
TimescaleDB-
Performance
High-cardinality handling
ClickHouseStrong
TimescaleDB-
Scale
Clustering / horizontal scale
ClickHouseDistributed / sharded
TimescaleDBDistributed / sharded
Replication / HA
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB-
Deployment
Deployment
ClickHouseSelf-hosted
TimescaleDBEmbedded
Interop
Prometheus remote-write compatible
ClickHouse-
TimescaleDB-
Licensing
Licence class
ClickHousePermissive OSS
TimescaleDBPermissive OSS

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

ClickHouse

Leader

An open-source columnar database system designed to handle large-scale analytical workloads with extremely low latency. Excels at real-time analytics, observability (logs, metrics, traces), data warehousing, and AI/ML applications.

Independently observed

TimescaleDB

TimescaleDB is a PostgreSQL extension designed to handle machine data and time-series workloads at scale, enabling operational databases for IoT platforms and physical-world monitoring.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

ClickHouse

Leader
from $0.22/moHybridFree tier30-day trial

From $25.30/TB/mo + $0.2181/compute unit/hr. 30-day free trial.

  • Basic$25.30/TB/mo + $0.2181/compute unit/hr
    • Up to 1 TB storage
    • 8-12 GiB total memory
    • Backups every 24h, retained for 1 day
    • 1 availability zone
    • Export backups to own cloud account
    • +4 more
  • Scale$25.30/TB/mo + $0.2985/compute unit/hr
    • Unlimited storage
    • Configurable memory
    • Compute-compute separation
    • Configurable backups
    • 2+ availability zones
    • +5 more
  • Enterprise$25.30/TB/mo + $0.3903/compute unit/hr
    • Everything in Scale plan
    • SAML SSO
    • Private regions
    • Manual vertical scaling for custom profiles
    • Enterprise support with 30 min response time for Severity 1 issues
    • +6 more
as of verify ↗

TimescaleDB

HybridFree tier

Open source core; Cloud managed and Enterprise self-hosted options available; contact sales for pricing details

  • Cloud Basic SupportFree
    • Email support
    • General questions
    • Best practices guidance
  • Cloud Production SupportContact sales
    • 24x7 support for Severity 1-2
    • 1h response for critical issues
    • Support portal access
    • On-call assistance
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
CLI
ClickHouse✗
TimescaleDB✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
Self-hosted
ClickHouse✓
TimescaleDB✓
On-premise
ClickHouse✗
TimescaleDB✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (1)
  • Kafka

ClickHouse

Leader
6 total - 5 not shared
  • Amazon S3
  • Airbyte
  • Vector
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
Independently observed

TimescaleDB

7 total - 6 not shared
  • S3
  • Iceberg
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Observability tools
  • Postgres ecosystem
Independently observed

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.