DBMS > Citus vs. DuckDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. DuckDB vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

An embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	1.91
Rank	#121	Overall
	#57	Relational DBMS

Score	7.44
Rank	#44	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Score	3.59
Rank	#72	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.citusdata.com

duckdb.org

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

duckdb.org/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Timescale

Initial release

2010

2018

2017

Current release

8.1, December 2018

1.0.0, June 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

MIT License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

server-less

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C#

3rd party driver
C++
Crystal

3rd party driver
Go

3rd party driver
Java
Lisp

3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby

3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig

3rd party driver

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

DB-Engines shares Q1 2025 database industry rankings and top climbers: Snowflake and PostgreSQL trending
1 May 2025, DB-Engines

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Recent citations in the news

Microsoft acquires Citus Data, re-affirming its commitment to Open Source and accelerating Azure PostgreSQL performance and scale
24 January 2019, The Official Microsoft Blog

Microsoft acquires Citus Data, creators of a cloud-friendly version of the PostgreSQL database
24 January 2019, GeekWire

Citus Data Announces Citus Cloud Database Support for HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance
13 November 2018, Business Wire

Microsoft acquires Citus Data
24 January 2019, TechCrunch

Microsoft acquires another open-source company, Citus Data
24 January 2019, CNBC

provided by Google News

Hands-On Exploratory Data Analysis with DuckDB
10 May 2025, Packt

Abusing DuckDB-WASM To Create Doom In SQL
23 April 2025, Hackaday

Streamlining access to tabular datasets stored in Amazon S3 Tables with DuckDB | Amazon Web Services
18 March 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

DuckDB project releases Local web UI, but not as open source
19 March 2025, devclass

Analyzing JSON Data with DuckDB and SQL
1 May 2025, KDnuggets

provided by Google News

Timescale Bolsters AI-Ready PostgreSQL with pgai Vectorizer
20 November 2024, infoq.com

Power IoT and time-series workloads with TimescaleDB for Azure Database for PostgreSQL
18 March 2019, Microsoft Azure

PostgreSQL is Now Faster than Pinecone, 75% Cheaper, with New Open Source Extensions
11 June 2024, PR Newswire

Timescale Valuation Rockets to Over $1B with $110M Round, Marking the Explosive Rise of Time-Series Data
22 February 2022, Business Wire

Visualizing IoT Data at Scale With Hopara and TimescaleDB
16 May 2023, Embedded Computing Design

provided by Google News

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