head to head · open source
ClickHouse vs Apache Pinot
ClickHouse has 49,951 GitHub stars, 8,969 forks, 7,547 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Apache Pinot has 6,138 stars, 1,509 forks, 1,403 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ClickHouse leads on adoption by 714% (49,951 vs 6,138 stars). ClickHouse is written in C++ under Apache-2.0; Apache Pinot is written in Java under Apache-2.0. ClickHouse has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, Apache Pinot 25%. ClickHouse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| ClickHouse | Apache Pinot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ClickHouse if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Apache Pinot if
- You want the Apache Pinot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Apache Pinot fits your workflow better
About ClickHouse
ClickHouse is an open source, column oriented database management system written in C++ that delivers real time analytical query performance on massive datasets. It operates within the broader data infrastructure ecosystem, serving as a high performance alternative to traditional row oriented databases for OLAP workloads.
read the full ClickHouse overview →
About Apache Pinot
Apache Pinot is a real time distributed OLAP datastore built to deliver scalable real time analytics at low latency. It lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and was originally built by engineers at LinkedIn and Uber. The project ingests from batch data sources such as Hadoop HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure ADLS, and Google Cloud Storage, as well as from stream data sources such as Apache Kafka. It is designed to scale up and out with no upper bound, and its performance stays constant based on the size of the cluster and an expected query per second threshold.
read the full Apache Pinot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ClickHouse or Apache Pinot more popular?
ClickHouse has 49,951 GitHub stars and Apache Pinot has 6,138. ClickHouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are ClickHouse and Apache Pinot free?
Both are open source. ClickHouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Apache Pinot under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ClickHouse and Apache Pinot?
ClickHouse is written in C++ and Apache Pinot in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ClickHouse or Apache Pinot?
Choose ClickHouse if you want the larger community (49,951 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Apache Pinot if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.