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Cloud · head to head

Longhorn vs Timeplus

Longhorn logo

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Timeplus logo

Timeplus

Databases

Streaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.; Timeplus proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • They diverge on capability: Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Timeplus covers Streaming SQL.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Longhorn and Timeplus actually diverge.

Attributes where Longhorn and Timeplus differ
AttributeLonghornTimeplus
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month for cloud, quoted for self-hosted
PlatformsLinux, KubernetesLinux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web
CategoryCloudDatabases

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Longhorn

  • Per-volume controllers
  • Synchronous replication
  • Snapshots and backups
  • Volume expansion
  • Disaster recovery volumes
  • Web interface

Only in Timeplus

  • Streaming SQL
  • Unified streaming and historical
  • ClickHouse-based engine
  • Single binary deployment
  • External streams
  • Materialised views

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Longhorn

  • An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Timeplus
  • Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Timeplus
  • A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Timeplus
  • A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot Timeplus

Timeplus

  • Real-time alerting on Kafka topics where standing up a Flink cluster is more work than the use case justifiesnot Longhorn
  • Fraud or anomaly detection that must join a live event stream against recent history in one querynot Longhorn
  • Streaming ETL from Kafka or MySQL change data capture into ClickHouse without writing Javanot Longhorn
  • A small data team that needs continuous aggregation but has no platform engineers to operate JVM infrastructurenot Longhorn

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Longhorn

  • There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
  • Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
  • It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
  • Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

Timeplus

  • Proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • It is a young project against Apache Flink’s decade of production history, so the hiring pool, the connector library and the body of known failure modes are all much smaller.
  • Inheriting ClickHouse internals also inherits ClickHouse constraints: memory-hungry queries, awkward updates and a SQL dialect that is not portable to other engines.
  • Exactly-once semantics and state recovery guarantees are less battle-tested than Flink checkpointing, which matters if the pipeline moves money.
  • Cloud pricing is by provisioned instance size rather than usage, so a bursty workload pays for peak capacity around the clock or has to be resized by hand.

Pricing, plan by plan

Longhorn

Free
  • LonghornFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
    • Community support via GitHub and Slack only
    • No vendor SLA or escalation path

Timeplus

Free
  • Timeplus ProtonFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence
    • Single node only
    • Full streaming SQL engine
  • Timeplus Cloud$199/month
    • One to thirty-two CPUs
    • 4 GB to 128 GB memory
    • From 250 GB SSD storage
  • Self-hosted or BYOC$undefined/year
    • Multi-node clustering
    • Kubernetes or bare metal
    • Customisable compute and storage

Which should you pick?

Choose Longhorn if

  • You need per-volume controllers.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
  • You also want synchronous replication.
Longhorn review

Choose Timeplus if

  • You need streaming sql.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
  • You also want unified streaming and historical.
Timeplus review

Questions people ask

Is Longhorn or Timeplus better?
Neither clearly leads. Longhorn starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Longhorn or Timeplus?
Longhorn starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.
Does Longhorn or Timeplus run on more platforms?
Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
Can I use Longhorn for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Longhorn best used for?
Longhorn is most often used for an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes, edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster, a k3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloads, a team that wants snapshots and s3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licences. Of those, an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes and edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster are not what Timeplus is typically brought in for.
What can Longhorn do that Timeplus cannot?
Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

Timeplus: Is Timeplus open source?

The core engine, Timeplus Proton, is Apache 2.0. Timeplus Enterprise and Cloud are commercial.

Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

Timeplus: What is the difference from Flink?

Timeplus is one binary with SQL as the only interface; Flink is a JVM cluster with a Java and SQL API and far more operational surface.

Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

Timeplus: Can Proton run in production?

It can, but it is single-node only, so there is no high availability without the commercial edition.

Timeplus: How much is the cloud?

From 199 US dollars a month, sized by CPU and memory, with a fourteen day trial.

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