head to head · open source
ClickHouse vs rocksdb
ClickHouse has 49,952 GitHub stars, 8,970 forks, 7,547 open issues and last shipped today. rocksdb has 32,108 stars, 6,931 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ClickHouse leads on adoption by 56% (49,952 vs 32,108 stars). ClickHouse is written in C++ under Apache-2.0; rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. ClickHouse has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, rocksdb 22%. ClickHouse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| ClickHouse | rocksdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 6.9K |
| 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 rocksdb if
- You want the rocksdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and rocksdb 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 rocksdb
RocksDB is an embeddable, persistent key value store written in C++ and developed by the Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is a library rather than a standalone server, and it forms the core building block for a fast key value server. The project builds on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat and Jeff Dean, and it lives in the systems infrastructure and database ecosystem, carrying the topics database and storage engine. It has been public for roughly fourteen years and is dual licensed under GPLv2 and Apache 2.0, so a user may select either license at their option.
read the full rocksdb overview →
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Data Warehousing & Processing projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Warehousing & Processing field.
Frequently asked questions
Is ClickHouse or rocksdb more popular?
ClickHouse has 49,952 GitHub stars and rocksdb has 32,108. ClickHouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are ClickHouse and rocksdb free?
Both are open source. ClickHouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rocksdb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ClickHouse and rocksdb?
ClickHouse is written in C++ and rocksdb in C++. 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 rocksdb?
Choose ClickHouse if you want the larger community (49,952 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rocksdb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.