How it works
Ordinary databases store a table row by row, which suits looking up one order. ClickHouse stores it column by column and compresses each column, so a question such as page views per day for a year reads only the two columns it needs. That design makes aggregate queries over huge event tables very fast.
It is built for inserting data in batches and querying it, not for updating single rows many times a second, so it usually sits beside a normal database: the app writes orders to PostgreSQL and streams events to ClickHouse. You can run it yourself for free or use ClickHouse Cloud.
ClickHouse pros and cons
Pros
- Very fast aggregations over billions of rows
- Excellent compression keeps storage cheap
- Speaks SQL, so analysts need no new language
Cons
- Poor fit for frequent single-row updates and deletes
- Joins and transactions are more limited than in PostgreSQL
- Running your own cluster takes real operational skill
When to use ClickHouse
Pick it when
- Web analytics, product events, logs and metrics
- Dashboards that group and count very large tables
Skip it when
- Your main app data (users, orders, carts)
- The data fits comfortably in PostgreSQL, which handles modest analytics too
ClickHouse pricing
Open source
Free to self-host. ClickHouse Cloud has a free trial, then Basic from about $67 a month and Scale from about $500 a month.
ClickHouse pricing page (opens in a new tab)Approximate, checked September 2026.What the other tools cost
ClickHouse vs the alternatives
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