ClickHouse is, by most benchmarks, one of the fastest analytical databases in existence — and that's the point of it: a general-purpose columnar store you build systems on, well beyond telemetry. To turn it into fleet operations, though, you supply everything above the raw store: dashboards, monitors, notification routing, alert history, and the UI your operators actually live in. Plexus is that layer, already built. Point it at the ClickHouse you run and it becomes a live connection — dashboards generate from the data, monitors watch it, and every alert keeps an auditable timeline. No migration.
ClickHouse is a columnar olap / time-series database. ClickHouse stores telemetry; Plexus is the operations frontend that can read it in place. Not really alternatives — one is the store, the other is the lens on it. This page is written by Plexus, so read it with that in mind — we’ve tried to be straight about where ClickHouse is the better choice. Last updated July 2026.
Already run ClickHouse? Plexus connects to it directly and reads in place — your data stays your data. If you don't have a store, Plexus includes one (itself backed by ClickHouse-class storage), with 3-year raw retention and 5-year hourly rollups. Either way the division of labor is the same: ClickHouse answers queries; Plexus is the frontend that turns them into dashboards, monitors, and an operating surface.
● full · ◐ partial · ○ not today
| Capability | Plexus | ClickHouse |
|---|---|---|
General-purpose OLAP and analytics beyond telemetry ClickHouse is a general database for far more than monitoring; Plexus is purpose-built for fleet operations. | ○ | ● |
Raw query speed and storage economics at scale Plexus's own store is built on ClickHouse-class storage, so you get the same class of performance without operating the database. | ● | ● |
Direct, arbitrary SQL over your raw data ClickHouse gives you full SQL over everything. Plexus queries connections through its dashboards and terminal, shaped around operations rather than arbitrary analytics. | ◐ | ● |
Dashboards, monitors, and alerting out of the box ClickHouse is storage plus SQL; you'd build all of this yourself. | ● | ○ |
Auto-generated dashboards from the data that lands A database has no UI; Plexus generates the fleet view from the first data it sees. | ● | ○ |
Per-alert audit trail with verdict capture Alert lifecycle and history are frontend concerns a database doesn't have. | ● | ○ |
Reads your existing ClickHouse with no migration If you already run ClickHouse, Plexus connects to it in place. | ● | ● |
Pick ClickHouse Pick standalone ClickHouse if you want a general-purpose analytical database to build your own systems on — it's superb at that, far beyond telemetry — and you have the team to build the operations layer yourself.
Pick Plexus Pick Plexus if you want the operations layer without building it: connect the ClickHouse you already run (or use the included store) and get auto-generated dashboards, threshold/event/offline monitors with routing, alert history, and a plain-language terminal — instead of hand-building a frontend on raw SQL.
Not really — they're layers. ClickHouse is the store; Plexus is the operations frontend that can read it in place. If you already run ClickHouse, Plexus connects to it with no migration. If you don't, Plexus includes storage of its own, so you never have to operate a database to get started.
No. Plexus includes storage — 3-year raw retention, 5-year hourly rollups — so you don't operate a separate database. If you already run ClickHouse, Plexus reads it directly as a connection.
Everything above the raw store, already built: ingestion via SDKs or HTTP, dashboards that generate themselves, monitors with per-monitor notification routing, a full alert timeline with verdict capture, and a ⌘K terminal for plain-language queries — without writing or operating any of it.