Apache Dorisvs
ClickHouse
ClickHouse: If you want the fastest raw scan performance and a much larger English-language community and managed cloud
Apache Doris
MPP analytical database with a MySQL wire protocol and sub-second aggregation on wide tables
As of 31 August 2026, Apache Doris is free to use. A columnar OLAP database from Baidu, now an Apache top-level project, that speaks the MySQL protocol so existing clients and BI tools connect without a driver change. Softwr lists it under Databases. Apache Doris is made by Apache Software Foundation, available on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
Overview
What Apache Doris does
Apache Doris is a massively parallel analytical database designed for high-concurrency reporting and real-time aggregation. It stores data column-wise with pre-aggregated materialised views and rollups, supports both a fixed-schema aggregate model and a unique-key model with real-time updates, and exposes everything through the MySQL wire protocol. It ingests from Kafka via routine load, from Flink and Spark connectors, and can query external Hive, Iceberg and Hudi tables through a multi-catalogue federation layer. The distinguishing property for buyers is compatibility. Because Doris answers on the MySQL protocol, any tool, driver or ORM that already talks to MySQL works against it unchanged, which removes the driver and dialect friction that slows adoption of ClickHouse or Druid. Combined with genuine support for updates and deletes on a unique key, this makes Doris a common choice for teams migrating reporting off a strained MySQL replica rather than building a new stack. Adoption is heaviest in China, where it originated at Baidu and is used widely at large internet companies. The trade-off is governance and support. Two commercial companies, VeloDB and SelectDB, were founded by overlapping groups of core contributors, and the two now sell competing managed versions of the same project. Much of the mailing list traffic, design discussion and issue reporting happens in Chinese, which raises the cost of getting help if your team does not read it.
What people use it for
- A team whose MySQL read replica can no longer serve reporting queries and wants an OLAP engine its existing drivers already speak
- A real-time dashboard backend needing sub-second aggregation over billions of rows with hundreds of concurrent users
- An ad or ecommerce platform that needs updates and deletes on analytical tables, which append-only OLAP engines handle badly
- A data team that wants one SQL endpoint over both internal tables and existing Hive or Iceberg tables in the lake
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Apache Doris.
- Two competing commercial vendors, VeloDB and SelectDB, were founded by overlapping core contributors, which makes the long-term governance and roadmap of the project harder to predict than a single-sponsor project.
- A large share of design discussion, issue reports and documentation detail originates in Chinese, so teams that do not read it get a thinner picture of known problems and workarounds.
- Operating a cluster means managing frontend and backend node roles, tablet balancing and compaction tuning, and compaction backlogs under heavy upsert load are a recurring production complaint.
- The MySQL protocol compatibility is at the wire level, not full MySQL semantics, so queries and functions still need porting and the familiarity can mislead.
- Managed cloud availability outside China and major clouds is limited compared with ClickHouse or Snowflake, so many Western adopters end up self-hosting whether they wanted to or not.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Apache Doris
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Apache DorisvsApache Druid
Apache Druid: If your workload is time series and streaming ingest with high concurrency dashboards
- Apache DorisvsSnowflake
Snowflake: If you would rather buy a managed warehouse than operate an MPP cluster yourself
Pricing
What Apache Doris costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Apache Doris
Free
- Apache 2.0 licence with no usage restrictions
- All engine features included
- Community support via mailing list and Slack
- Commercial managed versions sold separately by VeloDB and SelectDB
Capabilities
Features
MySQL wire protocol
Existing MySQL clients, drivers and BI connectors work without change
Aggregate and unique key models
Pre-aggregation on write, or real-time upserts with primary key deduplication
Materialised views
Automatically substituted rollups maintained on ingest
Multi-catalogue federation
Query Hive, Iceberg, Hudi, JDBC sources alongside internal tables
Routine load from Kafka
Continuous ingestion jobs managed inside the database
Compute storage separation
Optional architecture separating query nodes from shared object storage
Inverted indexes
Text and point-lookup indexing for log and search style queries
Workload groups
Resource isolation between competing query workloads on one cluster
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Apache Doris really free?
Yes, it is Apache 2.0 with no usage restrictions. The commercial products are managed services from VeloDB and SelectDB.
Can I use my MySQL tools with it?
Yes, it implements the MySQL wire protocol, so clients and BI connectors attach without a new driver, though SQL semantics differ.
How does it compare with ClickHouse?
Doris handles updates and high concurrency more comfortably; ClickHouse is generally faster on raw single-query scan throughput and has far wider Western support.
Who maintains it?
The Apache Software Foundation project, with most committers employed by VeloDB or SelectDB.
Keep looking
Where to go from Apache Doris
- Apache Doris alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Apache Doris pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Apache Doris badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Databases softwareThe full category
- Best Databases softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Databases software for
Compare Apache Doris with
- ClickHouse
- StarRocks
- Tinybird
- DuckDB
- Firebolt
- Amazon Redshift
- TiDB
- BigQuery
- Canary Labs
- Dragonfly
- Dremio
- Readyset
- Fivetran HVR
- Grist
- IBM Db2
- Instaclustr
- Knack
- LanceDB
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From $59/mo14 researched notesEmbedded retrieval library over the Apache 2.0 Lance columnar format, with proprietary Cloud and Enterprise tiers for serving at scale.
Pricing on request14 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Apache Doris, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Apache Doris
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Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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