Real-time OLAP databases · Imply Data, Inc.

Imply

Managed and self-hosted Apache Druid platform built by Druid's original creators.

Visit Imply Alternatives

Imply is a commercial company founded by the original creators of Apache Druid, and its products package Druid for organizations that do not want to run the open-source project's controller, broker and historical nodes themselves. Imply Polaris is the fully managed cloud offering, billed per project size and compute tier with a starter plan for proof-of-concept work and larger tiers for production; Imply also sells a self-managed Enterprise distribution of Druid for teams that need to keep data in their own infrastructure. On top of core Druid, Imply adds a visualization layer (Pivot), simplified cluster management, private networking and ingestion tooling. Costs are separated into a base subscription plus consumption charges for data ingestion, file storage and query execution. Imply is the natural choice for teams already committed to Druid's architecture who want vendor support and less operational burden.

At a glance

Vendor Imply Data, Inc.
Pricing model Usage-based
Free tier No
Deployment Cloud, Self-hosted
Open source No
Best for Teams standardized on Apache Druid who want vendor-managed operations and support.

Pricing

Polaris is priced by project size tier plus consumption-based ingestion, storage and query charges; the largest tier is custom-quoted.

Plan Price Notes
Starter From $100/month 25GB project size limit; proof-of-concept only, not recommended for production
Standard From $600/month Up to 9.6TB, 99.9% uptime SLA, private networking options
Custom Contact for pricing Unlimited project size, 99.95% uptime SLA

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Features

  • Fully managed Druid (Polaris) or self-managed Enterprise distribution
  • Pivot visualization and exploration UI
  • Simplified cluster and ingestion management
  • Private networking options
  • Consumption-based ingestion and storage billing
  • Uptime SLAs on paid tiers

Integrations

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Alternatives

Apache Druid Open-source real-time analytics database that ingests streaming and batch data for interactive dashboards. StarTree Fully managed cloud service for Apache Pinot, built by Pinot's original creators. Apache Pinot Open-source distributed OLAP database built by LinkedIn for low-latency analytics serving at high query volume. ClickHouse Cloud Fully managed cloud version of ClickHouse, billed by compute and storage rather than server count.

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Terms to know

OLAP (online analytical processing) A category of technology optimized for fast, multi-dimensional aggregation and slicing of data for analysis. Dashboard A visual display of the metrics a team needs to monitor, usually updated on a schedule or in real time. Data ingestion Moving data from its source systems into a storage or processing system where it can be transformed and analyzed. Real-time OLAP An analytical database that ingests streaming data continuously and answers aggregation queries with sub-second latency.

Related guides

How to choose a real-time OLAP database Real-time OLAP databases trade operational complexity for speed on fresh data — the decisions are architecture, query concurrency, and who runs it.