# GreptimeDB

> Columnar observability store for metrics, logs, and traces

GreptimeDB is an open-source observability database handling metrics, logs, and traces in one Rust engine, with columnar storage on object storage and both SQL and PromQL as query languages.

Website: https://greptime.com

## Use it when

- Metrics, logs, and traces should land in one store instead of Prometheus beside Loki beside a trace backend.
- Object storage as the primary store is the cost model you want, with compute and storage scaling separately.
- The data will be asked both PromQL and SQL: dashboards keep PromQL, analysts get SQL, and OpenTelemetry feeds it natively.
- Edge-to-cloud deployment matters; the same Rust engine runs small.

## Think twice when

- You need general-purpose OLAP over business tables; the engine is tuned for observability's filter-and-aggregate shape, not wide joins.
- Rows must update in place; inserts overwrite by key and timestamp instead.
- Maturity is the test: it is younger than ClickHouse and the observability incumbents it proposes to replace.

## How it runs

Stateless frontends speak SQL, PromQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Prometheus remote write, and Jaeger; datanodes own table regions and flush memtables as SSTs to S3, Azure Blob, or GCS with local cache. Run it standalone or clustered; GreptimeCloud is the managed service.

## Details

### General

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| License | Open source (permissive) |
| SPDX identifier | Apache-2.0 |
| Deployment | Self-hosted, Managed, Hybrid |
| Workload | Interactive, Streaming |
| Operational complexity | Medium |
| Pricing | Free, Subscription |
| Language | Rust |
| Repository | https://github.com/GreptimeTeam/greptimedb |
| Documentation | https://docs.greptime.com |
| Stars | 6.7k |

### OLAP Engines

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Specialization | Observability store: metrics, logs and traces in one engine |
| SQL dialect | SQL and PromQL; MySQL and PostgreSQL protocols |
| Joins | SQL joins; engine tuned for filter-aggregate |
| Updates and deletes | No UPDATE; insert overwrites by key and timestamp; DELETE |
| Ingest to queryable | Writes buffer in a memtable, flushed to object storage as SSTs |
| Storage format | Own columnar on object storage |
| Compute and storage | Stateless frontends over datanodes; object storage with local cache |
| Indexes | Optional per column: inverted, skipping and fulltext indexes |
| Pre-aggregation | Flow engine: continuous aggregation into sink tables on write |
| Concurrent users | Stateless frontends scale out; datanodes own regions |

## Capabilities

- [OLAP Engines](https://matca.io/capabilities/olap-engine)

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Source: https://matca.io/greptimedb
Last updated: 2026-08-31T11:40:48.269Z