DBMS > ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. HEAVY.AI vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. HEAVY.AI vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

A high performance, column-oriented RDBMS, specifically developed to harness the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	16.20
Rank	#37	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	6.10
Rank	#58	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	3.58
Rank	#92	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	2.10
Rank	#126	Overall
	#61	Relational DBMS

Score	2.48
Rank	#115	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

www.cockroachlabs.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable

github.com/heavyai/heavydb
www.heavy.ai

questdb.io

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

docs.heavy.ai

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Cockroach Labs

Google

HEAVY.AI, Inc.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2016

2015

2016

2014

Current release

v23.12.1.1368-stable, December 2023

23.1.1, May 2023

5.10, January 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; enterprise edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.

CockroachDB: A cloud-native, distributed SQL database designed for speed, scale, and survival. Get started for free today with a fully-managed CockroachDB cluster -- leave operations behind and get your app to market faster.

Implementation language

C++

C++ and CUDA

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

hosted

Linux

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

JDBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift
Vega

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/Thrift
Python

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

Sharding

Round robin

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Role-based access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

CockroachDB is a cloud-native, distributed SQL database architected for modern applications....
» more

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

- EFFORTLESS SCALE: Scale your applications, not operational complexity. CockroachDB...
» more

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Payment processing, user account management, metadata management, identity access...
» more

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Comcast, DoorDash, Mythical Games, Norfolk Southern, Netflix, LUSH, Bose, Shipt,...
» more

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Market metrics

12K+ long-running clusters 25K+ CockroachDB self-hosted clusters 75K+ CockroachDB...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

- Apache 2.0 for core features released up to and including the 19.1 release - Time-limited...
» more

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.