Choose DuckDB rather than SQLite
A benchmark comparing DuckDB and SQLite on an inexpensive Hetzner server shows DuckDB significantly outperforms SQLite in both write throughput and read scalability. DuckDB writes 4 to 15 times faster and can query 100 times more rows while maintaining similar latency, handling a billion metric points in under an hour using 10.8 GB of disk. The tests were conducted using the Traceway telemetry backend with identical hardware and methodology, highlighting DuckDB as a strong embedded alternative before considering client‑server OLAP solutions.
- ▪DuckDB achieved write speeds of 61,712 to 254,242 points per second, representing a 4‑ to 15‑fold increase over SQLite.
- ▪Read performance cliffs for metrics, spans, and logs were 100 times farther out on DuckDB, allowing it to handle up to 100 million rows with median query times under 5 seconds.
- ▪A billion metric points were ingested into DuckDB in under an hour, occupying 10.8 GB of storage, a scale not reached by SQLite in the same benchmark.
- ▪The benchmark used the Traceway binary on a $16.49‑per‑month Hetzner CCX13 instance, with identical data generation and load‑testing procedures for both databases.
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| Original publisher | Tracewayapp |
| Canonical URL | https://tracewayapp.com/blog/sqlite-vs-duckdb |
| Publication time | Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:05:40 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-29T14:28:15.215Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-29T14:28:15.215Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | S1_QSmKiEi1V · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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EngineeringSQLite vs DuckDB on the same $16 box: every cliff moved 100xJovan Stojiljkovic·July 21, 2026Same $16.49/month server, same Traceway binary, two embedded databases. DuckDB writes 4x to 15x faster than SQLite, serves dashboards at 100x the row count, and stores a billion metric points in 10.8 GB. Full numbers and methodology inside.TL;DR I spent six days working on and running a benchmark of observability data on DuckDB. I've done this with SQLite in the last blog post and I really wanted to see how DuckDB compares on a cheap CCX13 Hetzner instance. The way I've done the measurements is by implementing DuckDB as a valid storage engine for Traceway and then running its benchmarking suite.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tracewayapp.
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