ClickHouse vs Apache Doris
Both are alternatives to Snowflake. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Apache Doris vs ClickHouse — same comparison, one verdict.
ClickHouse
TOP PICKAnalytical queries at a speed that reframes what you thought was slow.
ClickHouse is a columnar database built for analytical queries and it is startlingly fast — billions of rows scanned in under a second on modest hardware is routine rather than exceptional. Apache-2.0, around 49k stars, and used at scale by Cloudflare, Uber and many others. Compression is excellent, so storage costs fall as well as compute. It is the strongest technical answer on this page, and the cost is operational: schema and index design matter enormously here, and a badly designed table is slow in ways a warehouse would have hidden from you.
Apache Doris
Real-time analytics with the operational simplicity Snowflake users expect.
Doris aims at the gap between ClickHouse's speed and a warehouse's ease: MySQL-compatible protocol, so existing clients and BI tools connect unchanged, real-time ingestion, materialised views maintained automatically, and considerably less tuning than ClickHouse demands. Apache Software Foundation governance, Apache-2.0, around 16k stars. It is the option to look at when the team wants ClickHouse economics but nobody wants to become a ClickHouse specialist.
Side by side
| ClickHouse | Apache Doris | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 93 | 92 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Pricing | Free and open source. ClickHouse Cloud is a paid managed option. | Free and open source. Managed offerings available from vendors. |
ClickHouse is Macrostack's recommended Snowflake alternative, so it's our pick here.
ClickHouse
Strengths
- +Frequently outruns Snowflake on analytical workloads, at a fraction of the cost
- +Apache-2.0 with no enterprise carve-out
- +Excellent compression — storage bills drop noticeably
- +Proven at enormous scale by well-known operators
Trade-offs
- −Schema and index design matter far more than in a warehouse
- −Updates and deletes are awkward by design
- −Operating a cluster is real work
- −Weaker governance and lineage tooling than Snowflake
Apache Doris
Strengths
- +MySQL protocol — existing BI tools and clients just connect
- +Materialised views maintained automatically, no manual refresh
- +Apache Software Foundation governance
- +Markedly less tuning required than ClickHouse
Trade-offs
- −Smaller community outside China than ClickHouse
- −Documentation in English is thinner
- −Fewer integrations in the Western data stack
- −Still a cluster to run
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-03. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.