Why we rebuilt our data warehouse on DuckDB over ClickHouse

PostHog initially designed its data warehouse to delay the need for hiring data engineers in small companies, but as businesses grew, they faced challenges with the scalability and flexibility of their system. The core issue was the transition from using PostHog as the primary analytics tool to needing more complex data engineering solutions, which led to exporting data to external warehouses and utilizing PostHog mainly as middleware. Challenges arose from their use of a multi-tenant ClickHouse cluster, which struggled with general-purpose warehousing needs, and the lack of sophisticated data tooling. To address these issues, PostHog rebuilt its system using DuckDB, creating single-tenant instances that integrate with modern data tools through a Postgres Wire protocol endpoint, and introduced DuckHog for efficient local data handling. This new architecture allows businesses to seamlessly integrate their event data with external data sources, providing a unified and trustworthy data context essential for AI-driven product development and enabling more effective and insightful agentic workflows.

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