Timeplus

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

As of 31 August 2026, Timeplus has a free plan and paid plans start at $199/month. A stream processing database that gives you Flink-style streaming SQL without the JVM, ZooKeeper or a Kubernetes cluster. Softwr lists it under Databases. Timeplus is available on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes.

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Overview

What Timeplus does

Timeplus processes streaming and historical data with the same SQL. Streams are appendable tables; a query with a window over one runs continuously and pushes results, while the same query without it behaves as a normal analytical query over history. It is built on the ClickHouse execution libraries, which is why the analytical side is fast, and it adds streaming primitives ClickHouse does not have: tumbling and hopping windows, stream-to-stream joins, substream partitioning and materialised views that maintain themselves incrementally. The distinguishing fact is deployment weight. The realistic alternative for this workload is Apache Flink, which means a JobManager, TaskManagers, a checkpoint store and someone who understands Flink state backends. Timeplus Proton is a single binary under 500 MB with no JVM and no ZooKeeper that will run on a t2.nano. For a team that needs stream processing but does not have a platform engineering group, that difference is the entire buying case. Proton is Apache 2.0 and free. Timeplus Enterprise is the commercial product, adding multi-node clustering, tiered storage, external stream connectors, a web console and support. Timeplus Cloud starts at 199 US dollars a month; self-hosted and bring-your-own-cloud deployments are annual and quoted. The usual open core caveat applies: the free version is deliberately single-node, so the moment you need high availability you are in a sales conversation.

What people use it for

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

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 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.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Timeplus

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.

Timeplusvs
Apache Flink
Apache Flink: Apache Flink if you need proven exactly-once semantics at very large scale and have platform engineers to run it.
Timeplusvs
Materialize
Materialize: Materialize if incrementally maintained views with strong consistency guarantees are the core requirement.
Timeplusvs
ClickHouse
ClickHouse: ClickHouse alone if the workload is really fast analytics on historical data rather than continuous processing.

Pricing

What Timeplus costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Timeplus Proton

Free

Apache 2.0 licence
Single node only
Full streaming SQL engine
Under 500 MB single binary
Community support

Timeplus Cloud

$199 /mo

One to thirty-two CPUs
4 GB to 128 GB memory
From 250 GB SSD storage
Daily backups
Up to twenty team members
Support within one business day

Self-hosted or BYOC

On request

Multi-node clustering
Kubernetes or bare metal
Customisable compute and storage
Four hour support response
Enterprise training and onboarding
Annual subscription, quoted

Capabilities

Features

Streaming SQL
Continuous queries with tumbling, hopping and session windows over live streams
Unified streaming and historical
The same SQL over live data and the full history behind it
ClickHouse-based engine
Analytical performance inherited from the ClickHouse execution libraries
Single binary deployment
No JVM, no ZooKeeper, runnable on a very small instance
External streams
Read and write Kafka, Pulsar and ClickHouse tables without copying data in
Materialised views
Incrementally maintained results that update as new events arrive

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 Timeplus open source?

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

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.

Can Proton run in production?

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

How much is the cloud?

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

Keep looking

Where to go from Timeplus

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Timeplus, 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.

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