Pick ClickHouse if
analytics teams who will burn the $300 / 30-day credits on a first SQL Console, then stay on Basic at $0.2181 / compute-unit / hour + $25.30 / TB / month when the warehouse must stay up.
Read the ClickHouse pageClickHouse vs QuestDB
Our take
Pick ClickHouse if analytics teams who will burn the $300 / 30-day credits on a first SQL Console, then stay on Basic at $0.2181 / compute-unit / hour + $25.30 / TB / month when the warehouse must stay up. Pick QuestDB if teams who will stay on the Apache self-host at $0 while they open a first console chart, then talk to QuestDB about Enterprise because /pricing does not print a Cloud $ tile.
ClickHouse
OLAP SQL Cloud. Trial
QuestDB
open-source time-series SQL desk
Best for
ClickHouse Warehouse queries you start with $300 trial credits
QuestDB Ingest-and-chart SQL you start at $0 on your host
Free plan
ClickHouse $0 · apache-2.0. Confirmed by the public repo license
QuestDB $0 · apache-2.0. You run the binary + the web console. Confirmed by LICENSE.txt (“Apache License / Version 2.0”)
Lowest paid
ClickHouse Data transfer $0.1152
QuestDB
Next step up
ClickHouse Managed Postgres from $0.125/hour
QuestDB
Runs where
ClickHouse Local or hosted
QuestDB
Watch out
ClickHouse $300 is trial credits, not a forever Free plan
QuestDB $0 is the license, not the ingest disk
Last checked
ClickHouse 2026-10-23 · clickhouse.com/pricing
QuestDB 2026-10-23 · github.com/questdb/questdb/blob
Which one, then?
Pick QuestDB if
teams who will stay on the Apache self-host at $0 while they open a first console chart, then talk to QuestDB about Enterprise because /pricing does not print a Cloud $ tile.
Read the QuestDB page