ClickStack iconClickStack

oss Freemium Star0k

Open-source observability platform built on ClickHouse for unified logs, metrics, and traces with OpenTelemetry-native ingestion.

api available observability self hosted
10x Faster Queries
90% Cost Reduction
OTel Native Support
100% Open Source

Overview

ClickStack is ClickHouse's official open-source observability stack that provides a complete solution for collecting, storing, and analyzing logs, metrics, and traces. Built entirely on ClickHouse's columnar database architecture, it delivers exceptional query performance and storage efficiency for observability data at any scale.

The platform is designed to be OpenTelemetry-native from the ground up, enabling seamless integration with the OTel ecosystem while leveraging ClickHouse's strengths in real-time analytics. ClickStack offers a unified approach to the three pillars of observability without requiring separate backends for each telemetry type.

The Verdict

Who Should Use ClickStack?

Best For

  • Teams already using or familiar with ClickHouse who want native observability
  • Organizations seeking to reduce observability costs with efficient storage
  • Engineers who need fast ad-hoc queries across logs, metrics, and traces
  • Companies wanting full control with self-hosted observability
  • Teams standardizing on OpenTelemetry for instrumentation

Not Ideal For

  • Teams needing fully managed SaaS with zero ops overhead
  • Organizations requiring extensive pre-built integrations out of the box
  • Small teams without ClickHouse expertise or resources to self-host
  • Use cases requiring advanced APM features like code-level profiling

What's Great

  • Exceptional query performance - ClickHouse's columnar architecture delivers sub-second queries even on billions of events
  • Significant cost savings - High compression ratios and efficient storage reduce infrastructure costs by up to 90% compared to alternatives
  • Unified data model - Logs, metrics, and traces in a single backend simplifies architecture and correlation
  • OpenTelemetry native - First-class OTel support means easy adoption with standard instrumentation
  • SQL-based querying - Familiar SQL syntax lowers the learning curve for exploring observability data
  • Fully open source - No vendor lock-in with Apache 2.0 licensed codebase
ClickHouse Official - Documentation

Watch Out For

  • Self-hosting complexity - Requires operational expertise to deploy and maintain ClickHouse clusters
  • Emerging ecosystem - Newer than established alternatives like Datadog or Grafana stack, with evolving UI/UX
  • Limited APM features - Focused on core observability; lacks advanced features like code profiling or AI-powered insights
  • Dashboard limitations - May require external visualization tools like Grafana for advanced dashboards
GitHub Discussions - Community Feedback

Pricing

Open Source
Free
Self-hosted, unlimited data, full feature access, Apache 2.0 license
ClickHouse Cloud
Usage-based
Managed ClickHouse with observability templates, starting at $0.30/GB stored
Enterprise
Custom
Dedicated support, SLAs, professional services, on-premise deployment options
View all features & details

Core Features

  • Unified logs, metrics, and traces storage
  • OpenTelemetry Collector integration
  • OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) native support
  • SQL-based query interface
  • Real-time data ingestion
  • Materialized views for pre-aggregation
  • Built-in alerting capabilities
  • Trace waterfall visualization

Data Capabilities

  • Columnar compression (10-40x reduction)
  • Distributed query execution
  • Time-series optimized storage
  • JSON and semi-structured data support
  • Secondary indexes for fast filtering
  • Data retention policies (TTL)
  • Async inserts for high throughput

Integrations

  • OpenTelemetry SDK (all languages)
  • Grafana data source
  • Prometheus remote write/read
  • Fluentd and Fluent Bit
  • Vector by Datadog
  • Jaeger trace backend
  • Kubernetes and Docker native
  • AWS, GCP, Azure deployment

Deployment Options

  • Docker and Docker Compose
  • Kubernetes with Helm charts
  • ClickHouse Operator for K8s
  • ClickHouse Cloud (managed)
  • Single-node development setup
  • Multi-node production clusters
  • Hybrid cloud configurations

How It Compares

Feature ClickStack SigNoz Datadog Grafana Stack
Deployment Self-hosted / Cloud Self-hosted / Cloud SaaS only Self-hosted / Cloud
Backend ClickHouse native ClickHouse Proprietary Multiple (Loki, Mimir, Tempo)
OpenTelemetry Native OTLP Native Supported Supported
Query Language SQL ClickHouse SQL Proprietary PromQL, LogQL, TraceQL
Cost Efficiency Excellent Very Good High cost Good
Managed Option ClickHouse Cloud SigNoz Cloud Yes (default) Grafana Cloud
APM Features Basic Good Extensive Good
Learning Curve SQL familiarity helps Moderate Low (but costly) Moderate
License Apache 2.0 Apache 2.0 / EE Proprietary AGPL / Apache
Pricing Free (self-host) Free tier available \(\)$ Free tier available

Getting Started

To quickly set up ClickStack for development:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ClickHouse/clickstack.git
cd clickstack

# Start with Docker Compose
docker-compose up -d

# Access the UI at http://localhost:8123

Configure your applications to send telemetry using OpenTelemetry SDKs with the OTLP exporter pointing to your ClickStack endpoint.

User Reviews

Loading reviews...