Apache Druid has no paid software tiers. Imply Polaris is separately priced: Starter from $100/month, Standard from $600/month, and Custom quoted. Capacity, ingestion/processing and file storage affect managed-service billing.
Apache Druid pricing in 2026
$0 software license; hosting and operations cost extra
Apache Druid software
$0 software license
- Self-managed OLAP database
- Infrastructure and operations cost extra
Every figure on this page was read from Apache Druid’s own pricing page on 5 Oct 2026. Prices change without notice.
Questions people ask
Is Apache Druid free?
Yes, the open-source software has no license fee. Self-managed deployments still incur infrastructure and operating costs. Commercial managed Druid services charge separately.
Is Apache Druid a replacement for PostgreSQL?
I would use it for analytical workloads rather than as a replacement for transactional application storage. Its lack of primary-key row updates is an important distinction.
Does Apache Druid support SQL joins?
Yes. With native joins, inputs other than the leftmost base must fit in memory. MSQ adds sort-merge joins for larger inputs, with different resource requirements.
Does Apache Druid keep individual events?
It can. Rollup is optional. If you enable aggregation during ingestion, the resulting records do not retain every original event separately.
Is Apache Druid better than ClickHouse?
It depends on the workload. I would evaluate Druid for continuous event analytics and compare ClickHouse closely for join-heavy analytical SQL. Test your actual queries before choosing.