What is CrateDB used for?

CrateDB is a distributed, PostgreSQL-compatible SQL database built on Lucene for real-time analytics over large volumes of time-series, JSON and vector data. It is a good fit for IoT and industrial analytics, real-time dashboards over event data, and mixed full-text and vector search.

Is CrateDB open source?

Yes. CrateDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crate/crate and is written mainly in Java.

Yes. CrateDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host CrateDB?

Yes. CrateDB can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is CrateDB an alternative to?

CrateDB is an open-source alternative to SingleStore. Other open-source alternatives to SingleStore include StarRocks, ClickHouse and TiDB.

Is CrateDB actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to CrateDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 6.4.5, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 4.4k stars on GitHub.

CrateDB: open-source alternative to SingleStore

About CrateDB

CrateDB is a scalable, distributed SQL database for storing and analyzing very large volumes of data in near real time, including complex queries. It is compatible with PostgreSQL and based on Lucene, and the vendor describes answers in under a second across datasets of millions to billions of rows and many data types, without pre-aggregation.

The product handles many data models in one engine, including time series, document and JSON, vector, full-text, spatial and relational data. Its repository topics mention IoT, industrial IoT, OLAP, analytics and vector databases. The code is written in Java, and the vendor lists solutions for real-time industrial analytics, AI operations and application analytics across industries such as manufacturing and energy.

CrateDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 in its open-source edition. It is available as the OSS build you run yourself, as an enterprise edition and as the managed CrateDB Cloud, with pricing published on the vendor's site. It suits teams building analytics on high-volume machine and event data.

Key features

Distributed SQL engine
PostgreSQL wire compatibility
Time-series, JSON, vector and full-text data
Spatial and relational data models
Real-time analytics on large datasets
OSS, enterprise and cloud editions

Good fit for

→IoT and industrial analytics
→Real-time dashboards over event data
→Mixed full-text and vector search

Built with: Java; PostgreSQL
Tags: distributed-database; sql; analytics; time-series; postgresql-compatible; iot; lucene; vector-database

CrateDB: questions and answers

What is CrateDB used for?: CrateDB is a distributed, PostgreSQL-compatible SQL database built on Lucene for real-time analytics over large volumes of time-series, JSON and vector data. It is a good fit for IoT and industrial analytics, real-time dashboards over event data, and mixed full-text and vector search.
Is CrateDB open source?: Yes. CrateDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crate/crate and is written mainly in Java.
Is CrateDB free?: Yes. CrateDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host CrateDB?: Yes. CrateDB can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is CrateDB an alternative to?: CrateDB is an open-source alternative to SingleStore. Other open-source alternatives to SingleStore include StarRocks, ClickHouse and TiDB.
Is CrateDB actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to CrateDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 6.4.5, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 4.4k stars on GitHub.