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ByConity

discontinued

by ByteDance (Volcano Engine) · since 2023

ByteDance's cloud-native ClickHouse fork with separated storage; archived in 2026.

columnar / olaprelationaldatabase engineopen source (permissive)legacy
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discontinued. Volcano Engine ended the project: maintenance-only from 1 Jun 2026 and the repo archived read-only after 1 Aug 2026. Consider ClickHouse Cloud, StarRocks or Apache Doris.

Overview

ByConity was an open-source data warehouse from ByteDance's Volcano Engine, built on the ClickHouse 21.8 codebase and re-architected for storage-compute separation: data on HDFS or S3, stateless virtual warehouses, a FoundationDB-backed catalog, a cascades optimizer and ACID transactions. It was a notable experiment in making ClickHouse cloud-native. In 2026 Volcano Engine ended the project: a maintenance-only transition began on 1 June 2026, and the GitHub repository was archived after 1 August 2026 with no further fixes. Existing users should plan a migration.

Analytics (OLAP)Data warehouseReal-time analytics

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Storage-compute separation with elastic virtual warehouses
  • +ACID transactions and a cascades optimizer on a ClickHouse base
  • +Compatible with ClickHouse clients and SQL

Trade-offs

  • −Archived: no security patches or bug fixes after August 2026
  • −Based on an old ClickHouse version (21.8)
  • −Heavy dependency stack (FoundationDB, HDFS/S3)

Great for

  • +Existing deployments planning migration
  • +Studying cloud-native ClickHouse architectures

Think twice for

  • −Any new project
  • −Production systems needing security updates

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 9 of 25 tracked

✓Transactions
✓Joins
✓Secondary indexes
✓JSON
✓Materialized views
✓Columnar storage
✓Durable persistence
✓Compression
✓Role-based access
–Full-text search
–Vector search
–Geospatial
–Change data capture
–Triggers
–Stored procedures
–TTL / expiry
–Pub/Sub
–In-memory
–Encryption at rest
–Time travel
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Streaming ingest
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Large · ≤ 1 PB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Full ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Distributed, Shared storage
Query languages
SQL (ClickHouse dialect, ANSI mode)

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator

Ecosystem

compatible withClickHouse
apis & protocolsClickHouse native protocol, HTTP interface
client languagesJava, Python, Go

Alternatives to ByConity

Compare all→
ClickHouseColumnar / OLAP69.8

Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.

byconity vs clickhouse →
StarRocksColumnar / OLAP15.6

MPP OLAP database with a fast vectorized engine, real-time upserts and native lakehouse queries.

byconity vs starrocks →
Apache DorisColumnar / OLAP15.9

Real-time MPP analytical database with MySQL compatibility, search indexes and lakehouse access.

byconity vs apache-doris →
DatabendColumnar / OLAP15.4

Rust-built cloud data warehouse on object storage, open source with a managed Databend Cloud.

byconity vs databend →
Apache KylinColumnar / OLAP16.9

OLAP engine that pre-computes cubes and aggregate indexes for sub-second SQL on huge datasets.

byconity vs apache-kylin →
SAP IQColumnar / OLAP11.9

Sybase's pioneering columnar warehouse, now SAP IQ and the engine behind HANA Cloud's data lake.

byconity vs sap-iq →

ByConity FAQ

What is ByConity?

ByConity is a columnar / OLAP database by ByteDance (Volcano Engine), first released in 2023. ByConity was an open-source data warehouse from ByteDance's Volcano Engine, built on the ClickHouse 21.8 codebase and re-architected for storage-compute separation: data on HDFS or S3, stateless virtual warehouses, a FoundationDB-backed catalog, a cascades optimizer and ACID transactions. It was a notable experiment in making ClickHouse cloud-native. In 2026 Volcano Engine ended the project: a maintenance-only transition began on 1 June 2026, and the GitHub repository was archived after 1 August 2026 with no further fixes. Existing users should plan a migration.

Is ByConity open source?

Yes. ByConity is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.

Does ByConity support ACID transactions?

Yes. ByConity supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.

Does ByConity scale horizontally?

ByConity scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at large scale (≤ 1 PB).

How can I run ByConity?

You can self-host it.

What is ByConity best for?

ByConity is a strong fit for existing deployments planning migration and studying cloud-native ClickHouse architectures. Think twice for any new project.

What are the best alternatives to ByConity?

Common alternatives to ByConity include ClickHouse, StarRocks, Apache Doris, Databend and Apache Kylin. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

Is ByConity still maintained?

ByConity is discontinued. Volcano Engine ended the project: maintenance-only from 1 Jun 2026 and the repo archived read-only after 1 Aug 2026. Consider ClickHouse Cloud, StarRocks or Apache Doris.

How popular is ByConity?

ByConity ranks #441 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (3.2/100), and #41 among columnar / OLAP databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.