A Guide to ClickHouse Pricing: Plans, Features, & Cost Optimization

ClickHouse offers a flexible and scalable pricing model designed to accommodate various organizational needs, from development projects to enterprise-scale deployments. This guide will explore the intricacies of ClickHouse's pricing structure, helping database engineers (like you) and decision-makers understand their options and optimize costs effectively.

ClickHouse Pricing Tiers Overview

ClickHouse provides three distinct pricing tiers, each catering to different use cases and requirements:

Development Tier

The Development tier serves as an entry point for smaller workloads and testing environments, with pricing ranging from $1 to $193 per month. This tier provides a balanced set of features while maintaining cost-effectiveness for development and testing purposes.

Example:

Source: ClickHouse Development Tier Pricing Example

Production Tier

The Production tier offers usage-based pricing and is designed for production workloads requiring higher performance and reliability. This tier provides enhanced resources and support capabilities for business-critical applications.

Example:

Source: ClickHouse Production Tier Pricing Example

Dedicated Tier

The Dedicated tier delivers custom capacity-based pricing with the highest level of resources and support, specifically tailored for enterprise-scale deployments and organizations with demanding requirements.

Below is a comprehensive comparison of features and specifications across all three service tiers:

ClickHouse Cost Components Breakdown

Storage Pricing

Storage costs are calculated based on the amount of data stored and vary by tier:

Development Tier Storage

• Base rate: $35.33 per 1 TB/month
• Effective storage can be significantly less due to 90-98% compression
• Predictable pricing for planning purposes

Production Tier Storage

• Base rate: $47.08 per 1 TB/month
• Includes enhanced durability and availability
• Compression benefits apply (90-98% reduction)

Compute Pricing

Compute resources are billed on an hourly basis, with different specifications and pricing for each tier:

Development Compute Units

Price: $0.2160 per unit/hour

1 compute unit includes:

• 16 GiB RAM
• 2+ vCPU
• Burstable performance characteristics

Production Compute Units

Price: $0.6894 per unit/hour

1 compute unit includes:

• 24 GiB RAM
• 6 vCPU
• Dedicated performance characteristics

Cloud Provider Specific ClickHouse Pricing

ClickHouse pricing varies across different cloud providers and regions. Here’s a breakdown:

AWS Pricing Considerations

• Available in multiple regions
• Standard pricing structure applies
• Additional AWS-specific features and integrations available
• Region-specific pricing variations may apply

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Pricing

• Competitive pricing structure
• Regional availability may differ from AWS
• GCP-specific optimizations available
• Similar core features across platforms

Azure Pricing

• Enterprise-focused pricing model
• Regional pricing variations
• Azure-specific features and integrations
• Compatible with Azure management tools

ClickHouse Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Leveraging Data Compression

ClickHouse’s impressive compression ratio of 90-98% provides significant cost savings:

Example:

• Raw data size: 1 TB
• Compression ratio: 95%
• Actual storage needed: 50 GB
• Monthly storage cost at development tier: $1.77 (instead of $35.33)

2. Right-sizing Compute Resources

Optimize compute costs by:

• Monitoring actual resource usage
• Adjusting compute units based on workload patterns
• Utilizing burstable instances where appropriate
• Implementing automatic scaling policies

3. Backup Strategy Optimization

Optimize backup-related costs through:

• Appropriate retention period selection
• Regular cleanup of unnecessary backups
• Monitoring backup storage usage
• Implementing lifecycle policies

Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) Option

ClickHouse offers a BYOC deployment model for organizations with specific requirements:

Benefits of BYOC

• Complete control over infrastructure
• Compliance with data residency requirements
• Integration with existing cloud infrastructure
• Custom security implementations
• Potential cost savings through existing cloud agreements

Points to consider

• Additional infrastructure management responsibility
• Requires internal expertise
• Custom pricing based on requirements
• Flexible deployment options

Support Tiers and SLAs

Development Tier Support

• Email support
• 1 business day response time
• Community forum access
• Basic documentation
• Standard SLA

Production Tier Support

• 24/7 support availability
• 1-hour response time for critical issues
• Technical account management
• Enhanced SLA
• Priority queue for issues

Dedicated Tier Support

• Premium support services
• Custom SLA options
• Dedicated support team
• Proactive monitoring
• Regular health checks

ClickHouse Total Cost of Ownership

Direct Costs

1. Compute resources
2. Storage usage
3. Data transfer
4. Backup storage
5. Support fees

Indirect Costs

1. Management overhead
2. Training and education
3. Integration costs
4. Migration expenses
5. Compliance maintenance

How Can Airbyte Help Optimize ClickHouse Query Cost?

1. Incremental Data Syncs

How it Helps: Airbyte supports incremental syncs, which ensure that only new or updated data is ingested into ClickHouse. By avoiding full table reloads, incremental syncs reduce unnecessary data processing.

Benefit: Minimizes data volume ingested and processed in ClickHouse, directly reducing query overhead and storage costs.

2. Data Normalization

How it Works: Airbyte provides normalization options to structure incoming data into a tabular format (e.g., third normal form). This makes data more query-efficient.

Benefit: Structured data reduces the need for computationally expensive transformations during query execution.

3. Schema Management

How it Helps: Airbyte handles schema drift by automatically updating destination schemas in ClickHouse when the source data structure changes.

Benefit: Prevents query failures or the need for manual intervention, ensuring consistent and efficient data querying.

4. Data Filtering at Source

How it Works: With Airbyte, users can set up filters to limit the data transferred to only relevant records or fields.

Benefit: Smaller datasets lead to faster queries and less storage utilization, saving costs on both querying and storage in ClickHouse.

5. Efficient Use of Compression

How it Helps: Airbyte supports destinations like ClickHouse that benefit from columnar storage and compression. It ensures data is well-suited for ClickHouse’s strengths.

Benefit: Compression reduces storage costs and improves query performance by lowering data retrieval time.

6. Batching and Scheduling

How it Works: Airbyte allows for configurable batch sizes and schedules syncs during off-peak hours.

Benefit: Controlled batch processing reduces strain on ClickHouse during peak usage hours and optimizes resource allocation.

7. Customizable Data Pipelines

How it Helps: Airbyte offers flexibility in creating pipelines tailored to your ClickHouse use case, such as segmenting high-frequency tables into different pipelines.

Benefit: Targeted pipelines streamline resource use and avoid bottlenecks caused by querying over broad datasets.

8. Change Data Capture (CDC)

How it Works: Airbyte’s CDC capabilities allow capturing only row-level changes, such as INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations, using tools like Debezium for sources that support it.

Benefit: Reduces the volume of data synced and speeds up ClickHouse queries by keeping datasets lean.

9. Cost Management through Observability

How it Helps: Airbyte provides logs and metrics for monitoring sync performance, data volume, and error rates.

Benefit: Observability aids in identifying and rectifying costly sync patterns or redundant data flows, ultimately leading to cost savings.

10. Prebuilt and Custom Connectors

How it Works: Airbyte’s extensive connector library simplifies integration with a variety of data sources. Users can customize connectors for optimized data preparation before ingestion into ClickHouse.

Benefit: Pre-optimized data reduces the complexity and resource demands of queries.

11. Simplified Replication Management

How it Helps: Airbyte makes it easy to replicate data across multiple ClickHouse instances, ensuring load is distributed.

Benefit: Balancing load across nodes minimizes query time and avoids resource contention.

Conclusion

ClickHouse’s pricing model offers flexibility and scalability across different deployment scenarios. The three-tier structure provides options for organizations of all sizes, while features like impressive data compression and various deployment options help optimize costs.

Key takeaways for effective cost management:

1. Utilize data compression to minimize storage costs
2. Right-size compute resources based on actual usage
3. Implement appropriate backup and retention policies
4. Monitor usage and costs regularly
5. Consider BYOC options for specific requirements
6. Leverage appropriate support tiers based on needs

Organizations should carefully evaluate their requirements against the features and pricing of each tier to make an informed decision. Regular monitoring and optimization of resource usage can help maintain cost-effectiveness while ensuring optimal performance.

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