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Updated yesterday · Independent Analysis
ClickHouse vs DuckDB
Capability Overview
ClickHousevs DuckDB
4.5G2
Only in ClickHouse
- ✦ Vectorized query execution
- ✦ Real-time ingestion
- ✦ Kafka integration
✓ Free planFrom $66.52/moN/A users · est.
DuckDBvs ClickHouse
Only in DuckDB
- ✦ In-process execution
- ✦ Parquet/CSV/JSON direct query
- ✦ S3 and GCS file access
✓ Free planN/A users · est.
Quick VerdictIndependent Analysis
ClickHouse and DuckDB are both Databases tools. Compare features, pricing, and ratings below to find the best fit for your team.
When to Choose ClickHouse vs DuckDB
The question that matters: “In what situation will I regret choosing A over B after 3 months?”
ClickHouse Unique Strength
Real-time Product Analytics
Ingest clickstream events via Kafka, query 100B rows in under 1 second for live dashboards
→ Choose ClickHouse if this scenario applies to you. DuckDB doesn't offer a comparable solution.
ClickHouse Unique Strength
Log Analytics Pipeline
Store and query server logs at petabyte scale with 10x better compression than Elasticsearch
→ Choose ClickHouse if this scenario applies to you. DuckDB doesn't offer a comparable solution.
ClickHouse Unique Strength
Ad Tech Reporting
Count unique users and calculate click-through rates across billions of ad impressions in milliseconds
→ Choose ClickHouse if this scenario applies to you. DuckDB doesn't offer a comparable solution.
ClickHouse Unique Strength
Time-series Monitoring
Replace InfluxDB with ClickHouse for metrics storage, gaining SQL query support and better compression
→ Choose ClickHouse if this scenario applies to you. DuckDB doesn't offer a comparable solution.
DuckDB Unique Strength
Ad-hoc Parquet Analysis
Query 50GB Parquet files on S3 directly from Python without ETL, returning results in seconds
→ Choose DuckDB if this scenario applies to you. ClickHouse doesn't offer a comparable solution.
DuckDB Unique Strength
Data Science Pipelines
Replace pandas aggregations with SQL-based DuckDB queries for 10-50x faster group-by operations
→ Choose DuckDB if this scenario applies to you. ClickHouse doesn't offer a comparable solution.
DuckDB Unique Strength
dbt Local Development
Run dbt models locally against DuckDB instead of cloud warehouses to cut development cycle time
→ Choose DuckDB if this scenario applies to you. ClickHouse doesn't offer a comparable solution.
DuckDB Unique Strength
Lakehouse Query Layer
Use DuckDB as a compute engine over Delta Lake or Iceberg tables without a dedicated cluster
→ Choose DuckDB if this scenario applies to you. ClickHouse doesn't offer a comparable solution.
Pricing Comparison & PlansHigh· Verified Jun 28, 2026
ClickHouse Plans
Free tier available
Open Source
Open SourceBest for: This free plan is ideal for users who prefer self-hosting and managing their own ClickHouse deployments
- ✓Self-hosted deployment
- ✓Open-source columnar database
- ✓Real-time analytics on massive datasets
- ✓No cost for software
View on vendor site
MOST POPULARBasic
$67/moBest for: Testing / starter projects
- ✓1 replica x 8 GiB RAM, 2 vCPU
- ✓500 GB compressed data
- ✓500 GB backup data
- ✓10 GB public internet egress data transfer
- ✓Expert support with 1 business day response time
View on vendor site
Scale
$499/moBest for: Production + data at scale
- ✓Unlimited storage
- ✓Configurable memory
- ✓Compute-compute separation
- ✓2+ availability zones
- ✓Expert support with 1 hour response time 24x7 for Severity 1 issues
View on vendor site
Enterprise
Contact SalesBest for: Very large scale + enterprise
- ✓SAML Single sign-on authentication (SSO)
- ✓Private regions
- ✓Manual vertical scaling for custom profiles
- ✓Enterprise support with 30 min response time for Severity 1 issues
- ✓Named Lead Support Engineer
View on vendor site
DuckDB Plans
Free tier available
Capability Breakdown
5 differences found across 14 standardized features
Feature
ClickHouse
DuckDB
Managed Cloud
✓
✗
ACID Transactions
✗
✓
Real-time Ingestion
✓
✗
Horizontal Scaling
✓
✗
Replication
✓
✗
Total (raw)
14
18
ClickHouse Features
- •Column-oriented storage
- •Vectorized query execution
- •Real-time ingestion
- •Kafka integration
- •SQL support
- •Distributed tables
- •Compression (LZ4/ZSTD)
- •Approximate query functions
- •Materialized views
- •Replicated tables
- •JSON support
- •Geospatial functions
- •Time-series optimizations
- •REST and native protocols
DuckDB Features
- •In-process execution
- •Parquet/CSV/JSON direct query
- •S3 and GCS file access
- •SQL support
- •Python/R/Node.js integration
- •Vectorized execution
- •Parallel query processing
- •Apache Arrow integration
- •Zero-copy pandas exchange
- •Window functions
- •ACID transactions
- •Column-oriented storage
- •Schema inference
- •HTTPFS extension
- •REST API
- •SDK
- •CLI
- •Connection Pooling
Strengths & Limitations
Evaluative strengths and weaknesses: not feature lists
Pros
- +Scans billions of rows per second via vectorized query execution
- +Materialized Views for real-time, incremental data aggregation
- +High-ratio data compression (LZ4, ZSTD) drastically cuts storage costs
- +Natively handles semi-structured data (JSON, maps, arrays) at scale
- +Full-featured, production-ready open-source core; no vendor lock-in
Cons
- −No multi-row transactions (ACID); not suitable for OLTP workloads
- −Point updates and deletes are expensive, batch-oriented operations
- −Limited full-text search capabilities compared to dedicated search engines
- −Operational complexity for self-hosted clusters (sharding, replication)
- −Steep learning curve for its non-standard SQL dialect and functions
Pros
- +Runs in-process with zero infrastructure setup
- +Directly queries Parquet and CSV on S3 without ETL
- +Outperforms many server-based DBs on single-machine workloads
Cons
- −Sometimes we have memory issues that cause job failures, which we don't fully understand why, but we can rerun the jobs without pr
At a Glance
User Rating
4.5/5vs4.5/5
ClickHouse
DuckDB
Starting Price
$66.52/movsPay-per-use
ClickHouse
▲
DuckDB
Feature Count
14 featuresvs18 features
ClickHouse
DuckDB
▲
User Base
0vs0
ClickHouse
DuckDB
ClickHouse · Price & Data SyncLast verified: June 28, 2026 · CE-DB-2026W23-A00E90 · ✓ Pricing updated Jun 7, 2026
DuckDB · Price & Data SyncLast verified: June 28, 2026 · CE-PRICING-2026W21-16638D · ✓ Pricing updated May 30, 2026
Recent Price History
ClickHouse
ClickHouse updated "Scale" from Custom to $499.38/mo
Price change · Jun 7, 2026
ClickHouse
ClickHouse updated "Basic" from Custom to $66.52/mo
Price change · Jun 7, 2026
ClickHouse
ClickHouse removed the "Cloud Dedicated" plan
Plan removed · May 30, 2026
ClickHouse
ClickHouse removed the "Cloud Production" plan
Plan removed · May 30, 2026
ClickHouse
ClickHouse removed the "Cloud Development" plan
Plan removed · May 30, 2026
DuckDB
DuckDB removed the "Commercial Support" plan
Plan removed · May 30, 2026
DuckDB
DuckDB added a new "Commercial Support" plan
Plan added · May 21, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Comparisons
ClickHouseFree · from $66.52/mo
DuckDBFree planSources & Data Trail · ClickHouse
- 1.Official Pricing Page·Source of verified tiers(Checked: 2026-06-28)
- 2.Official Website·Official vendor website
- 3.G2·G2 verified reviews · 4.5/5 · 23 reviews
- 4.TrustRadius·TrustRadius verified reviews
- 5.PeerSpot·PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews
Sources & Data Trail · DuckDB
- 1.Official Pricing Page·Source of verified tiers(Checked: 2026-06-28)
- 2.Official Website·Official vendor website
- 3.PeerSpot·PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews