# ClickHouse Cloud vs MotherDuck

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/clickhouse-cloud-vs-motherduck/

Every value below is read from ClickHouse Cloud's and MotherDuck's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | ClickHouse Cloud | MotherDuck |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| What the free plan includes | Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month. | Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute a month, with community support and preset role-based access control. A standing plan rather than a trial. |
| Entry paid plan | From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity. | $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor. |
| Pricing model | Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month. | Per organisation per month plus usage, with seats rather than scans as the limiting dimension: up to 10 internal active users on Business against 3 on Lite, and unlimited service accounts. Five instance types and read-scaling replicas sit above that. |

## Where they differ

### What the free plan includes

- ClickHouse Cloud: Trial credits over a 30-day window, drawn down until they are depleted or the window closes, whichever comes first. Adding a card during the trial does not end it — the credits keep being consumed first. A time-boxed credit rather than a standing allowance, which is the opposite of BigQuery's tebibyte renewing every month. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))
- MotherDuck: Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute a month, with community support and preset role-based access control. A standing plan rather than a trial. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

### Entry paid plan

- ClickHouse Cloud: From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))
- MotherDuck: $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

### Pricing model

- ClickHouse Cloud: Compute, storage and data transfer itemised separately, with compute varying by how many hours a day the service is active — $39.91, $79.83 or $159.66 in the published example for 6, 12 or 24 hours, against a flat $25.30 of storage. Scale, the always-on auto-scaling tier, starts at $499.38 a month. ([source](https://clickhouse.com/docs/products/cloud/reference/billing))
- MotherDuck: Per organisation per month plus usage, with seats rather than scans as the limiting dimension: up to 10 internal active users on Business against 3 on Lite, and unlimited service accounts. Five instance types and read-scaling replicas sit above that. ([source](https://motherduck.com/product/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick ClickHouse Cloud if Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.

Pick MotherDuck if Analytics that fit on one machine, priced per organisation rather than per query: $250 a month flat plus usage, so adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not move the floor. A 99.9% SLA comes with it.

Consider something else: ClickHouse Cloud — Data transfer matters. It is the only one here that puts public internet egress and cross-region transfer on the invoice as their own lines, so moving results out has a price the others absorb.

Consider something else: MotherDuck — You have more than ten people or need an SLA cheaply. Business caps internal active users at ten, and both the SLA and custom roles arrive only at $250 — the free Lite plan allows three users and publishes no availability commitment.

## Documented by only one

- Kind of free offer: ClickHouse Cloud: Free trial
- Egress over allowance: ClickHouse Cloud: Itemised rather than absorbed: the published example carries $1.15 of public internet egress on 10 GB and $0.16 of cross-region transfer on 5 GB. The only member of this category that puts data transfer on the invoice as its own line.
- Uptime SLA: MotherDuck: 99.9% availability on the Business plan. Nothing is published for Lite, so the SLA arrives with the $250 fee rather than with the product.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: ClickHouse Cloud or MotherDuck?**

ClickHouse Cloud: From $66.52 a month for a Basic service active 6 hours a day — one replica with 8 GiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, 500 GB of compressed data and 500 GB of backup. The same service active 24 hours a day is $186.27, so the entry price is a statement about usage as much as about capacity.
MotherDuck: $250 per organisation per month, plus usage. Priced on the organisation rather than on data or time — the only member here where adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not change the floor.

**Should I choose ClickHouse Cloud or MotherDuck?**

Pick ClickHouse Cloud if Knowing what a part-time warehouse costs. The published example is explicit — $66.52 a month for a Basic service awake six hours a day against $186.27 awake around the clock — with compute, storage and egress itemised separately.
Pick MotherDuck if Analytics that fit on one machine, priced per organisation rather than per query: $250 a month flat plus usage, so adding a query, a gigabyte or an hour does not move the floor. A 99.9% SLA comes with it.