Altinity.Cloud® vs ClickHouse® Cloud FAQ

Altinity.Cloud and ClickHouse Cloud are both cloud platforms for managing ClickHouse. Discover what sets these powerhouses apart and explore the unique features and capabilities that each one offers.

Feature Altinity.Cloud ClickHouse Cloud Why it matters
100% Open Source No vendor lock-in. Easy migration to other platforms (no fee to migrate).
Run ClickHouse Anywhere including customer cloud accounts and on-prem environments *ClickHouse Cloud recently introduced a BYOC model Offers flexibility to balance cost, performance, security, and compliance needs.
Run any ClickHouse version including ClickHouse official builds, Altinity Stable Builds for ClickHouse, and Antalya builds Balance new features and stability—upgrade on your terms.
Full life cycle enterprise support Ensures smooth deployment, minimal downtime, and a scalable, tailored system.
Built-in integrations Limited Many Facilitates seamless connections with a wide range of platforms and services.
Network transfer fees None
$
 Adds unexpected costs for users who frequently export large datasets and creates barriers to moving data freely, increasing lock-in risk
Cheap storage on Iceberg tables In preview! Altinity’s innovative Project Antalya is building a path to reduce storage costs by up 80%. It’s now available in Altinity.Cloud.

Still unsure which vendor is right for your use case?

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Running ClickHouse on Altinity.Cloud cut our costs by 25% and boosted our performance. Even better, we can also store data with higher granularity with ClickHouse–down to mouse click moves–than we could have done with Elasticsearch. We can show aggregate results to users and let them drill down into detailed source data for deeper, more insightful analysis than was previously possible.

Software engineer, Product Analytics Company

Altinity.Cloud: Full Access to All Open Source ClickHouse Features

While ClickHouse Cloud simplifies management, it limits access to certain features available in open-source ClickHouse. Below, we highlight a few key differences.

In open-source ClickHouse, you can implement custom UDFs using external programming languages (e.g., Python), enabling advanced logic and integrations.

ClickHouse Cloud, however, currently supports only SQL-based UDFs, which limits flexibility for complex or language-specific transformations that may be crucial for certain use cases.

In open-source ClickHouse, you can use Kafka table engines to ingest and process streaming data directly from Kafka topics, enabling real-time analytics.

ClickHouse Cloud does not support Kafka engine tables, which restricts its ability to handle real-time streaming use cases natively (they do suggest alternatives to the Kafka engine table).

In open-source ClickHouse, you can use named collections to store and manage external data source credentials or configurations, offering flexibility for dynamic integrations.

ClickHouse Cloud does not support named collections, which can limit advanced use cases requiring external resource management directly within the database.

In open-source ClickHouse, you can configure a wide range of system settings to optimize performance, resource usage, and query execution to suit specific workloads.

ClickHouse Cloud does not allow customization of most system settings, limiting advanced tuning options for complex or resource-intensive deployments.

In open-source ClickHouse, you have access to experimental features that allow you to test cutting-edge functionality and customize the database for advanced use cases.

ClickHouse Cloud does not provide access to experimental features, limiting opportunities for early adoption and innovation with new ClickHouse capabilities.

In open-source ClickHouse and with Altinity.Cloud, you have full control over where and how ClickHouse is deployed, enabling a true BYOC model across any cloud provider or on-premise infrastructure.

ClickHouse Cloud’s BYOC offering is limited to specific configurations and cloud providers, restricting flexibility for organizations with diverse infrastructure requirements.

For more information on ClickHouse Cloud Compatibility, we recommend you check out their documentation. You can always ask us as well!

Still evaluating your ClickHouse options? Let’s chat about the best solution for your needs.

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