PeerDB alternative — PeerDB vs Skippr

PeerDB is Postgres (also MySQL, MongoDB, CockroachDB) CDC into ClickHouse. ClickHouse, Inc. acquired it on 30 Jul 2024. It ships natively in ClickHouse Cloud. Latest GitHub release is v0.37.14 (28 Oct 2026). Licence is AGPL-3.0 (relicensed from Elastic-2.0 on 13 Jan 2026). Actively maintained destinations are ClickHouse, ClickHouse Cloud, and Postgres. Snowflake, BigQuery (as dest), Kafka / Redpanda / Pub/Sub / Event Hubs, S3, and GCS stay in the product but are deprecated; QRep / XMIN mirrors are deprecated too. New mirrors should be CDC. Iceberg is not a connector. PeerDB Cloud, from 30 Jul 2024, only offers Postgres to ClickHouse Cloud. Public Cloud grid: Micro 250 USD/month (up to 2 vCPU), Small 1000 USD (4), Medium 2000 USD (8), Large 4000 USD (16). Billing is provisioned vCPU, not rows moved. Autoscaling can double vCPU for a one-off initial load without bumping the tier. Self-host is Docker. This is not Iceberg ∪ WAL you query in one binary.

Skippr is an open Streamhouse you run as one Rust binary. Write skippr.yml (or the same thing in Python), discover, sync. You query live state over Iceberg ∪ WAL, and the history is ordinary Iceberg in your bucket. No PeerDB mirror. ELT into a warehouse is one path, not the product.

Feature	Skippr	PeerDB
Deploy	Single Rust binary, your VPC or on-prem	Docker self-host, or ClickHouse Cloud / PeerDB Cloud
Schema	In-stream evolution, sibling columns	Postgres types through the mirror, including jsonb / arrays / TOAST
Storage	Open Iceberg on Parquet you own	ClickHouse (active). Iceberg is not a dest
CDC	Log-based; fails closed if the dest cannot honour	Log CDC. QRep / XMIN deprecated
Query	`skipprd query` on Iceberg ∪ WAL; history in any Iceberg engine	ClickHouse SQL after the mirror. Not Iceberg
Pricing	Free self-hosted engine	AGPL-3.0 self-host. Cloud is vCPU/month from 250 USD.

What PeerDB is good at

Postgres logical replication into ClickHouse with a fast initial snapshot, native Postgres types, and a SQL mirror instead of a Kafka bus. That is the product. ClickHouse Cloud embedding is why teams who already bought ClickHouse skip a second CDC vendor. If the job is "this Postgres into this ClickHouse," that is a real product.

Where the job is wider

PeerDB is a CDC mirror. It is not a Streamhouse. There is no Iceberg destination. There is no Iceberg ∪ WAL. There is no skipprd query on in-flight lake rows. Kafka, S3, and Snowflake sinks are deprecated. Cloud will not target a warehouse you picked yourself.

vCPU tiers are the ops if you are on Cloud. ClickHouse MergeTree, parts, and PeerDB slot lag if you self-host. Skippr will not replace a PeerDB mirror that already lands ClickHouse. Skippr also will not write MergeTree. ClickHouse as a database is a later page.

If the job is "Postgres into ClickHouse we already staff," PeerDB is the narrower tool. If the job is live SQL on Iceberg you run, the mirror was never that.

Getting started

Install skipprd from the install guide, or pip install skippr. The three tabs write the same skippr.yml. Then discover, sync, and query.

YAMLCLIPython

yaml

skippr:
  workspace: analytics
  skipprd_el_storage_mode: local

pipelines:
  orders:
    data_source: data_sources.app_db
    data_sink: data_sinks.lake

data_sources:
  app_db:
    Postgres:
      host: db.internal
      user: skippr_reader
      password: ${APP_DB_PASSWORD}
      database: app
      tables: [orders, customers]
      cdc_mode: snapshot_then_cdc

data_sinks:
  lake:
    AthenaIceberg:
      warehouse: s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/
      glue_database_name: analytics
      athena_workgroup_name: primary
      athena_results_s3_bucket: my-athena-results
      region: us-east-1
    schema_sink: schema_sinks.lake_schema

schema_sinks:
  lake_schema:
    AthenaIceberg:
      warehouse: s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/
      glue_database_name: analytics
      athena_workgroup_name: primary
      athena_results_s3_bucket: my-athena-results
      region: us-east-1

bash

skipprd --workspace analytics --storage-mode local connect data-source postgres \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name app_db \
  --host db.internal \
  --user skippr_reader \
  --password '${APP_DB_PASSWORD}' \
  --database app \
  --tables orders \
  --tables customers \
  --cdc-mode snapshot_then_cdc

skipprd connect data-sink athenaiceberg \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name lake \
  --warehouse s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/ \
  --glue-database-name analytics \
  --athena-workgroup-name primary \
  --athena-results-s3-bucket my-athena-results \
  --region us-east-1

skipprd connect schema-sink athenaiceberg \
  --pipeline orders \
  --name lake_schema

python

from skippr import (
    Config,
    DataSinkAthenaIceberg,
    DataSourcePostgres,
    DataSourcePostgresSourceCdcMode,
    EnvRef,
    LocalStorage,
    Pipeline,
)

cfg = Config().workspace("analytics").storage(LocalStorage())

app_db = cfg.data_source(
    "app_db",
    DataSourcePostgres(
        host="db.internal",
        user="skippr_reader",
        password=EnvRef("APP_DB_PASSWORD"),
        database="app",
        tables=["orders", "customers"],
        cdc_mode=DataSourcePostgresSourceCdcMode.SNAPSHOTTHENCDC,
    ),
)

lake = cfg.data_sink(
    "lake",
    DataSinkAthenaIceberg(
        warehouse="s3://my-iceberg-warehouse/",
        glue_database_name="analytics",
        athena_workgroup_name="primary",
        athena_results_s3_bucket="my-athena-results",
        region="us-east-1",
    ),
    schema_sink="lake_schema",
)

cfg.pipeline("orders", Pipeline(data_source=app_db, data_sink=lake))
cfg.save("skippr.yml")

bash

export APP_DB_PASSWORD='your-postgres-password'
skipprd discover --pipeline orders
skipprd sync --pipeline orders --once
skipprd query "SELECT count(*) FROM analytics.orders"

Which to choose

Choose PeerDB if you want Postgres CDC into ClickHouse, especially ClickHouse Cloud.

Choose Skippr if you want one binary, live SQL on Iceberg ∪ WAL, and files that stay yours. Skippr will not run a PeerDB mirror.

Install from Install. Connector and query reference live in Developer Docs. For optional onboarding in your VPC, Enterprise Jumpstart or Contact.

PeerDB alternative — PeerDB vs Skippr ​

What PeerDB is good at ​

Where the job is wider ​

Getting started ​

Which to choose ​

PeerDB alternative — PeerDB vs Skippr

What PeerDB is good at

Where the job is wider

Getting started

Which to choose