QuestDB
QuestDB is an open-source SQL time-series database delivering ultra-low-latency ingestion and multi-tier storage for tier-1 capital markets, banking, aerospace, and energy firms, with an Enterprise tier and an AI-agent-ready interface.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2013
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What QuestDB does
QuestDB is an open-source SQL time-series database founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco. The product is purpose-built for ultra-low-latency ingestion and querying of high-velocity time-series data, with a multi-tier storage engine combining write-ahead logging for hot ingest, time-partitioned columnar storage for real-time SQL queries, and Apache Parquet/Iceberg-based cold storage on S3, Azure Blob, or NFS. QuestDB exposes standard SQL via both a REST API and PostgreSQL wire protocol (PGWire) and supports vectorized, SIMD-optimized execution. It differentiates from general-purpose OLTP and from competing time-series engines through specialized SQL primitives — OHLCV materialized views, SAMPLE BY time bucketing, ASOF JOIN for point-in-time matching, HORIZON JOIN for markouts/transaction-cost analysis, and 2D order book arrays. Native Parquet and Iceberg support positions data as portable and AI/ML-ready without proprietary lock-in.
The commercial offering is a free Apache 2.0 open-source edition and a quote-based Enterprise subscription that adds high availability, multi-AZ resilience, distributed petabyte-scale architecture, RBAC, TLS, SSO, and 24/7 expert support with a 99.9% uptime SLA. Deployment channels include self-serve downloads (Docker/Kubernetes/macOS/Windows/Linux) and listings on AWS, Azure, and GCP marketplaces. The go-to-market combines product-led growth via the open-source community (17.1k GitHub stars, 5,288+ Slack members, 170+ contributors) with a direct enterprise sales motion targeting capital markets, banking, aerospace, and energy firms. Named customers include B3 Exchange, HDFC Bank, BTG Pactual, One Trading, Airbus, Mizuho, OKX, Aquis/SIX, Ripple HiddenRoad, Caladan, and Laser Digital (Nomura). The company has raised approximately $14.3M in disclosed funding across a seed round (2020) and a $12M Series A led by 468 Capital in November 2021, with stated plans to launch a DBaaS platform.
The leadership team consists of co-founders Nicolas Hourcard (CEO), Vlad Ilyushchenko (CTO), and Tancrede Collard (CPO). The company employs 1–10 people and holds SOC 2 Type 1 compliance certification. Recent strategic emphasis is on AI-agent interoperability, with a dedicated "QuestDB for AI Agents" product line enabling LLM-based coding agents to query the database via standard SQL through a REST API.
QuestDB firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- QuestDB
- Legal name
- QuestDB
- Website
- https://questdb.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2013
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- QuestDB is an open-source SQL time-series database delivering ultra-low-latency ingestion and multi-tier storage for tier-1 capital markets, banking, aerospace, and energy firms, with an Enterprise tier and an AI-agent-ready interface.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
QuestDB industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Time-Series Database Software
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (5132), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Time-Series Databases (HDAEAAAF)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Managed Databases (Relational/NoSQL/In-Memory DBaaS) (HDABAAAE), Query Engines & SQL Analytics Layers for Warehouses/Lakes (HDAEABAI)
Keywords
Where QuestDB is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
QuestDB business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Enterprise Subscription: QuestDB offers an Enterprise subscription tier that adds high availability, multi-AZ replication, RBAC, TLS, SSO, petabyte-scale multi-tier storage, and 24/7 expert support with a 99.9% uptime SLA. This is the primary commercial revenue stream targeting tier-1 banks, exchanges, and aerospace firms.
- Open Source (Community): The open-source Apache 2.0 edition is free to download and use, serving as the product-led growth engine that drives community adoption, contributor growth, and enterprise upsell. It does not directly generate revenue.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Others | Open Source — free tier |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise — commercial subscription |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels10 records
QuestDB product offering
Product offeringCore offering
QuestDB develops and distributes an open-source SQL time-series database that ingests, stores, and queries high-velocity time-series data through a multi-tier storage engine combining write-ahead logging, columnar real-time storage, and Parquet cold storage on object storage. The commercial Enterprise tier adds high availability, multi-AZ replication, RBAC, TLS/SSO, petabyte-scale distributed storage, and 24/7 support, sold via annual subscriptions to tier-1 capital markets, banking, aerospace, and energy firms.
Product overview
QuestDB is an open-source time-series database platform designed for demanding AI and time-series workloads. The core offering is QuestDB Open Source, an Apache 2.0 licensed SQL-based time-series database with multi-tier storage (hot ingest via WAL, real-time columnar engine, and cold Parquet storage). QuestDB Enterprise extends the core with high availability, multi-AZ resilience, distributed scale to petabyte level, and 24/7 support. QuestDB for AI Agents enables autonomous coding agents to query data via natural language and SQL. QuestDB for Capital Markets provides industry-specific capabilities for exchanges, banks, and trading firms. QuestDB BYOC offers self-managed cloud deployment. The portfolio integrates with the open data stack (Kafka, Flink, Spark, Pandas, Grafana) and supports deployment via Docker, Kubernetes, and major cloud platforms.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- QuestDB Enterprise: Enterprise edition with high availability, security, multi-AZ resilience, distributed architecture, and 24/7 support.
- QuestDB for AI Agents
- QuestDB for Capital Markets
- QuestDB BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)
Products and services
- QuestDB Open Source
Quantifiable outcome
- 10x faster ingest than the next-fastest database in TSBS benchmarks
- +8 more outcomes
Companies that use QuestDB
Customer profileNamed customers11 records
Segments6 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
QuestDB technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration17 records
AI capability6 records
Feature10 records
QuestDB partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Eight partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.
- Future Alpha 2026 ConferenceminorQuestDB appears as a participant/sponsor at the Future Alpha 2026 conference for quantitative finance professionals in New York (March 31 – April 1, 2026), with over 100 speakers, 30 sponsors, and 800 expected attendees.
- Apache KafkacoreNative Kafka integration allows QuestDB to ingest data directly from Kafka message streams. Kafka is listed as a first-tier native integration in QuestDB's integrations portfolio.
- GrafanacoreNative Grafana integration for visualization of QuestDB time-series data. Listed as a primary native integration on the website.
- PostgreSQL / PGWirecoreQuestDB exposes a PostgreSQL wire protocol (PGWire) interface, enabling any PostgreSQL-compatible client, BI tool, or SQL driver to connect to QuestDB. This is a fundamental interoperability integration.
- Apache SparkcoreNative Spark integration for large-scale data processing against QuestDB data. Listed in the integrations graphic alongside other data processing tools.
- Python / Pandas / Polars / py-questdb-clientcoreNative Python client library (py-questdb-client) and native support for Pandas and Polars dataframes. Allows Python developers and AI/ML frameworks to query QuestDB directly.
- AWS (Amazon Web Services)coreAWS is listed as a supported deployment environment for QuestDB, alongside Docker, Kubernetes, Azure, and GCP. This is a deployment channel integration rather than a product integration.
- Microsoft AzurecoreAzure Blob Storage is referenced as an object storage target for QuestDB's multi-tier cold storage tier. Azure is listed as a supported deployment environment.
Scale indicators12 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
QuestDB competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Datadog: Cloud observability and monitoring platform with its own time-series storage. Broad incumbent whose capabilities overlap with QuestDB in monitoring/telemetry workloads, though delivered as a packaged SaaS.
- Kx Systems (kdb+): Proprietary incumbent in capital-markets time-series with kdb+/q language. QuestDB explicitly positions itself as a SQL-first, open-standards alternative to kdb+ for trading floor workloads.
- Snowflake: Cloud data warehouse increasingly used for large-scale time-series and event analytics. Overlaps with QuestDB where customers consolidate real-time and historical analytics, particularly via Iceberg/Parquet.
Direct peers
- ClickHouse: Open-source columnar OLAP database with strong time-series and observability use cases. Competes with QuestDB on high-throughput analytical SQL workloads and offers a managed ClickHouse Cloud.
- InfluxData (InfluxDB): Leading open-source time-series database with InfluxDB OSS and InfluxDB Cloud. Most comparable peer to QuestDB on product category, OSS-to-enterprise model, and target use cases including IoT and observability.
- Apache Druid (Imply): Open-source real-time analytics database commonly used for time-series event data and observability. Overlaps with QuestDB on sub-second analytical queries over streaming data.
- Timescale (TigerData): Open-source time-series database built on PostgreSQL with a managed cloud offering (Timescale Cloud). Directly competes with QuestDB on time-series workloads and PLG-style OSS adoption in capital markets and IoT.
Emerging players
- Prometheus: Open-source metrics and monitoring time-series database widely deployed in DevOps. Tangential to QuestDB's enterprise use cases but adjacent in time-series category.
- StarRocks: Open-source real-time OLAP database with vectorized execution. Targets similar low-latency analytics use cases in observability and financial services.
- Materialize: Streaming SQL database built on incremental view maintenance. Competes in real-time analytical SQL workloads adjacent to QuestDB's latency-sensitive trading use cases.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks4 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
QuestDB social profiles
Digital presenceQuestDB compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
QuestDB financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
QuestDB leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles3 records
QuestDB funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds3 records
Investors9 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
QuestDB M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about QuestDB
What does QuestDB do?
QuestDB develops and distributes an open-source SQL time-series database that ingests, stores, and queries high-velocity time-series data through a multi-tier storage engine combining write-ahead logging, columnar real-time storage, and Parquet cold storage on object storage. The commercial Enterprise tier adds high availability, multi-AZ replication, RBAC, TLS/SSO, petabyte-scale distributed storage, and 24/7 support, sold via annual subscriptions to tier-1 capital markets, banking, aerospace, and energy firms.
Is QuestDB a public or private company?
QuestDB is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was QuestDB founded?
QuestDB was founded in 2013. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is QuestDB based?
QuestDB is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does QuestDB make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Enterprise Subscription is the primary driver. The others are open Source (Community).
Who are QuestDB's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Datadog, Kx Systems (kdb+) and Snowflake. Direct peers are ClickHouse, InfluxData (InfluxDB), Apache Druid (Imply) and Timescale (TigerData). Emerging players are Prometheus, StarRocks and Materialize.
Does QuestDB have an API?
Yes. QuestDB exposes a REST API for data ingestion and querying. The REST API enables ingestion of time-series data and execution of SQL queries. Additionally, QuestDB supports PostgreSQL compatibility via PGWire protocol, allowing standard Postgres clients and tools to connect. Python SDK available via py-questdb-client on GitHub. Developer documentation is at questdb.com/docs.
What industry is QuestDB in?
QuestDB's product category is Time-Series Database Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEAAAF, Time-Series Databases, with a secondary code of HDABAAAE, Managed Databases (Relational/NoSQL/In-Memory DBaaS). Its NAICS code is 5132 and its SIC code is 7372.