OLAP Databases
Real-time analytics
The following columnar databases use a shared-nothing architecture and provide a sub-second response time. DDL, DML and DCL are operated via SQL. These databases also support tiering for long-term cold storage.
- Apache Doris - MPP analytical database with MySQL-compatible interface, optimized for high-concurrency queries and real-time data ingestion.
- Apache Druid - Real-time OLAP database optimized for streaming ingestion, time-series analytics, and sub-second queries on high-cardinality data.
- Apache HBase - Distributed, wide-column NoSQL database on top of HDFS, modeled after Google Bigtable.
- Apache Pinot - Distributed OLAP datastore for user-facing real-time analytics, designed for low-latency queries at high concurrency.
- ClickHouse - Column-oriented DBMS for online analytical processing, capable of processing billions of rows per second.
- StarRocks - MPP OLAP database with vectorized execution engine, optimized for real-time analytics and high-concurrency workloads.
Search engines
Search engines complement OLAP systems for full-text search and log analytics use cases, where keyword relevance and inverted indexes matter more than aggregate query performance.
- Elasticsearch - Search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene.
- Meilisearch - Open source search engine, that aims to be a ready-to-go solution.
- OpenSearch - Apache 2.0 fork of Elasticsearch.
- Quickwit - Search engine on top of object storage, using shared-everything architecture.
- Typesense - Open-source, typo-tolerant search engine optimized for instant search-as-you-type experiences and developer productivity.
Hybrid OLAP/OLTP NewSQL (aka HTAP)
HTAP (Hybrid Transactional-Analytical Processing) databases handle both transactional writes and analytical reads in a single engine, eliminating the need to maintain a separate data warehouse for reporting.
- Citus - PostgreSQL compatible distributed table.
- CockroachDB - Distributed SQL database with strong consistency, horizontal scaling, and PostgreSQL compatibility for HTAP workloads.
- TiDB - MySQL compatible SQL database that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing workloads.
- YugabyteDB - Distributed SQL database compatible with PostgreSQL and Cassandra APIs, designed for global, cloud-native HTAP applications.
Timeseries
Time-series databases are optimized for append-heavy workloads where data is tagged, timestamped, and queried by time range — distinct from general OLAP because they prioritize ingestion throughput, automatic retention, and time-aligned aggregations.
- Grafana Mimir - Prometheus-compatible TSDB on top of object storage, horizontally scalable.
- InfluxDB - Purpose-built time series database optimized for high-write-throughput metrics, events, and IoT data with a SQL-like query language.
- Prometheus - Pull-based metrics collection and time series database, de facto standard for cloud-native monitoring.
- QuestDB - High-performance time series database written in Java and C++, with SQL support and ingestion rates exceeding millions of rows per second.
- TimeScaleDB - PostgreSQL-compatible TSDB with automatic partitioning and time-series-specific SQL extensions.
- VictoriaMetrics - Fast, cost-effective Prometheus-compatible TSDB with low memory and storage footprint.
Managed cloud services
Fully managed cloud data warehouses trade self-hosted operational overhead for elastic scaling and pay-as-you-go pricing. All handle petabyte-scale analytics; they differ in cost model, latency profile, and ecosystem integrations.
- AWS Redshift - Fully managed petabyte-scale data warehouse on AWS.
- Azure Synapse Analytics - Unified analytics service combining data integration, warehousing, and big data on Azure.
- Databricks - Lakehouse platform combining data warehousing and ML, built on Delta Lake and Apache Spark.
- Firebolt - Cloud-native OLAP warehouse engineered for sub-second query performance at scale.
- Google BigQuery - Serverless, pay-as-you-go data warehouse with built-in ML and BI capabilities.
- Snowflake - Cloud data platform with a decoupled storage and compute architecture, supporting multi-cloud deployments.
- Tinybird - Real-time analytics API platform built on ClickHouse.