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CnosDB

active

by CnosDB · since 2022

Rust cloud-native time-series database with SQL on DataFusion and InfluxDB-style ingestion.

time-seriescolumnar / olapdatabase engineopen source (copyleft)growing
Website Docs Source★ 1.8K Compare Find similar

Overview

CnosDB is an open-source distributed time-series database whose 2.x line was rewritten in Rust on Apache Arrow and DataFusion. It separates compute from storage, offers multi-tenancy and SQL with time-series extensions, and accepts InfluxDB line protocol, Prometheus remote write and OpenTSDB writes so existing collectors can be reused. The Beijing-based company behind it targets IoT, energy and observability workloads and sells an enterprise edition and cloud service. It is AGPL-3.0 and, while still actively released, has a small community outside China.

Time-series dataIoT & telemetryObservability

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Rust engine with Arrow/DataFusion gives full SQL with time-series functions
  • +Accepts Influx, Prometheus and OpenTSDB writes for easy migration
  • +Built-in multi-tenancy and per-tenant resource limits
  • +Compute-storage separation for elastic scaling

Trade-offs

  • −AGPL-3.0 licence
  • −Small community and limited English material
  • −Few public large-scale references
  • −Ecosystem integrations lag InfluxDB and Prometheus backends

Great for

  • +Energy and utility telemetry
  • +IoT platforms needing multi-tenancy
  • +Replacing InfluxDB 1.x with a SQL-capable engine

Think twice for

  • −Teams needing a large support ecosystem
  • −Transactional data
  • −Log search

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 7 of 25 tracked

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

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Large · ≤ 1 PB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
None
Consistency
Eventual
Schema
Flexible
Architecture
Single node, Distributed, Client server
Query languages
SQL

Meta, query and storage nodes scale separately; data is split into vnodes with replica sets.

Deployment

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

Ecosystem

compatible withInfluxDB, Prometheus, OpenTSDB
apis & protocolsHTTP, Arrow Flight SQL, InfluxDB line protocol, Prometheus remote write/read, OpenTSDB
client languagesGo, Java, Python, Rust

Alternatives to CnosDB

Compare all→
InfluxDBTime-Series51.0

Purpose-built time-series database, rebuilt in Rust on Arrow, DataFusion and Parquet for version 3.

cnosdb vs influxdb →
TDengineTime-Series17.4

Industrial-IoT time-series database with a table-per-device model and built-in streaming and caching.

cnosdb vs tdengine →
Apache IoTDBTime-Series22.8

Apache time-series database for industrial IoT with tree and table models and edge-to-cloud sync.

cnosdb vs apache-iotdb →
GreptimeDBTime-Series15.1

Rust observability database that keeps metrics, logs and traces in one columnar engine on object storage.

cnosdb vs greptimedb →
openGeminiTime-Series6.5

CNCF sandbox distributed time-series database from Huawei Cloud, compatible with InfluxQL.

cnosdb vs opengemini →
TimescaleDBTime-Series47.1

PostgreSQL extension adding hypertables, columnar compression and continuous aggregates for time series.

cnosdb vs timescaledb →

CnosDB FAQ

What is CnosDB?

CnosDB is a time-series database by CnosDB, first released in 2022. CnosDB is an open-source distributed time-series database whose 2.x line was rewritten in Rust on Apache Arrow and DataFusion. It separates compute from storage, offers multi-tenancy and SQL with time-series extensions, and accepts InfluxDB line protocol, Prometheus remote write and OpenTSDB writes so existing collectors can be reused. The Beijing-based company behind it targets IoT, energy and observability workloads and sells an enterprise edition and cloud service. It is AGPL-3.0 and, while still actively released, has a small community outside China.

Is CnosDB open source?

Yes. CnosDB is open source. License: GNU AGPL v3.0.

Does CnosDB support ACID transactions?

No. CnosDB does not provide ACID transactions; its consistency model is eventual.

Does CnosDB scale horizontally?

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

How can I run CnosDB?

You can self-host it.

What is CnosDB best for?

CnosDB is a strong fit for energy and utility telemetry; IoT platforms needing multi-tenancy; and replacing InfluxDB 1.x with a SQL-capable engine. Think twice for teams needing a large support ecosystem.

What are the best alternatives to CnosDB?

Common alternatives to CnosDB include InfluxDB, TDengine, Apache IoTDB, GreptimeDB and openGemini. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

How popular is CnosDB?

CnosDB ranks #354 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (6.7/100), and #20 among time-series databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.