Database foundation
Built on PostgreSQL, a proven foundation for your data
Proprietary
Unknown origin
License
Apache 2 OSI core + Source available, permissive, and free Timescale license
MIT License, Clustering available with paid Enterprise License only
Only available as a serverless DBaaS
Query language
Proprietary, FluxQL
SQL subset with additional functions. Some standard SQL commands missing
Data model
Relational
time-series and business data together in one place
NoSQL
tag-set support for time-series data only
NoSQL-like, focused on time-series data only
Ecosystem
Works with the entire PostgreSQL ecosystem
Limited
Limited
Query performance
Up to 7000x faster than InfluxDB, especially as cardinality increases
Competitive when cardinality of metric is small
Lackluster, particularly at scale, with no apparent ability to mitigate as a user.
Complex queries appear to cause locking when run in parallel
Ingest speed
High (Millions of data points per second, even at high cardinality)
Moderate (Less than one million metrics per second at moderate cardinality)
Low (hundreds of data points per second)
Scale
Stores 100s of terabytes on a single node, or petabytes across multiple nodes
Clustering and multi-node only available with Enterprise
Unlimited scale, although no control over resources or improving speeds.
High availability
Broad PostgreSQL tooling for backup/restore, replication, and failover
Proprietary tooling for backup/restore.
Clustering only available with Enterprise
No control over backup/restore or PITR. No mechanism for performing backups or dumps
Cloud cost
Charges based on compute and storage. No limitation on queries, ingest, or output
Save on storage with 94% compression
Charges based on queries, ingest, output and storage
Cloud charges based on queries, ingest, output and storage. Query costs add up quickly.
10%+ increased cost in some EU regions
Cloud availability
2000+ compute and storage configurations across 75 regions
Limited configuration across
5 US/EU regions
AWS only with very limited region availability