The best time series databases, according to hackers
6 time series databases were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 2 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The two most recommended time series databases with the badge. Each figure is 2 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Low resource and storage costs
People recommend it as a low-maintenance, drop-in Prometheus replacement that is cheap on storage and easy to run. Critics mention an operational burden and no full dashboard UI like Grafana.
Go-to choice when scale is needed
Open-source metrics database that scales to very large series counts, often recommended when Prometheus is not enough. Caveat: it is heavy to run and over-engineered for small setups.
All 6 time series databases, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | VictoriaMetrics | 26 | 2 | 93% | 12 | — | Approved |
| 2 | TimescaleDB | 21 | 11 | 66% | 7 | — | — |
| 3 | Grafana Mimir | 12 | 6 | 67% | 5 | — | Approved |
| 4 | kdb+ by KX | 9 | 8 | 53% | 7 | — | — |
| 5 | RRDtool | 6 | 1 | 86% | 3 | — | — |
| 6 | InfluxDB | 5 | 6 | 45% | 3 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same time series database in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to time series databases that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
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