ClickHouse vs quasardb

ClickHouse: Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows. quasardb: Distributed columnar time-series database, now sold as Quasar, for tick, sensor and industrial data.

key differences

ClickHouse is primarily a columnar / OLAP database; quasardb is time-series.
Licensing: ClickHouse is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); quasardb is proprietary (Proprietary (client APIs BSD-licensed)).
ClickHouse is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than quasardb (≤ 1 PB).
Transactions: ClickHouse offers limited ACID; quasardb offers full.
Only ClickHouse has full-text search, vector search, geospatial, json, materialized views.
Only quasardb has transactions.
ClickHouse has a serverless option; quasardb does not.

choose clickhouse for

+Product and web analytics
+Log and observability backends
+Real-time dashboards over event streams
+Time-series and IoT metrics at scale

best at · Real-time analytics, OLAP, Observability

choose quasardb for

+Capital-markets tick and order-book history
+Industrial and IoT sensor telemetry
+Backtesting and quantitative research over long histories
+Edge collection with central analytics

best at · Time-series, Tick data, IoT

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

quasardbDistributed columnar time-series database, now sold as Quasar, for tick, sensor and industrial data.

overview

Primary model

Columnar / OLAP

Time-Series

Also supports

Relational, Document, Vector, Time-Series

Columnar / OLAP, Key-Value

Type

Database engine

Status

Active

Developer

ClickHouse, Inc.

QuasarDB SAS

First release

2016

2009

Latest version

26.10.2.103 (Oct 24, 2026)

3.14.3 (Sep 2026)

License

Open source (permissive)Apache License 2.0

ProprietaryProprietary (client APIs BSD-licensed)

Free tier

✓

—

popularity

WhichDB Score

69.8

6.6

Rank

#10

#359

GitHub stars

50.6K

–

Stack Overflow questions

2.2K

–

scale & guarantees

Comfortable data size

Massive (Multi-PB)

Large (≤ 1 PB)

Horizontal scaling

Native

Multi-region

Read replicas

None

ACID

Limited

Full

Consistency

Eventual

Strong

Schema

Strict

Architecture

Distributed, Shared storage, Single node, Client server

Distributed, Client server

deployment

Self-hosted

✓

Vendor-managed cloud

✓

—

Serverless

✓

—

Embedded

—

Edge

—

✓

Clouds

AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Aiven

AWS, Azure, Google Cloud

capabilities

Transactions

—

✓

Joins

✓

Secondary indexes

✓

Full-text search

✓

—

Vector search

✓

—

Geospatial

✓

—

JSON

✓

—

Change data capture

—

Triggers

—

Stored procedures

—

Materialized views

✓

—

TTL / expiry

✓

—

Pub/Sub

—

Columnar storage

✓

In-memory

—

Durable persistence

✓

Compression

✓

Encryption at rest

✓

—

Role-based access

✓

—

Time travel

—

Branching

—

Online schema changes

✓

—

Streaming ingest

✓

Offline sync

—

Runs in WebAssembly

—

interfaces

Query languages

SQL (ClickHouse dialect), PRQL, KQL (experimental)

SQL-like query language with time-series extensions

Client languages

Python, Go, Java, JavaScript, Rust, C++, C#

Python, Java, Go, C#, C, C++

Best for

Real-time analytics, OLAP, Observability, Warehouse

Time-series, Tick data, IoT, Real-time analytics

Add more to this comparison Not sure either fits? Try smart match

ClickHouse vs quasardb: FAQ

What is the difference between ClickHouse and quasardb?

ClickHouse: Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows. quasardb: Distributed columnar time-series database, now sold as Quasar, for tick, sensor and industrial data. ClickHouse is primarily a columnar / OLAP database; quasardb is time-series. Licensing: ClickHouse is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); quasardb is proprietary (Proprietary (client APIs BSD-licensed)). ClickHouse is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than quasardb (≤ 1 PB).

When should I choose ClickHouse over quasardb?

Choose ClickHouse for product and web analytics; log and observability backends; and real-time dashboards over event streams. Choose quasardb for capital-markets tick and order-book history; industrial and IoT sensor telemetry; and backtesting and quantitative research over long histories.

Is ClickHouse or quasardb more popular?

ClickHouse ranks #10 on the WhichDB Score (69.8/100) and quasardb ranks #359 (6.6/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.

Are ClickHouse and quasardb open source?

Yes. ClickHouse is open source. License: Apache License 2.0. No. quasardb is proprietary, closed-source software.