# Time series databases for enterprise buyers: what AI models recommend, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. Asked as "time series database" and as "database for metrics and sensor data", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/time-series-databases/enterprise/

**Standing:** TimescaleDB leads with 47% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 59 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TimescaleDB | 47% | 6% | 70 |
| 2 | InfluxDB | 17% | 23% | 62 |
| 3 | VictoriaMetrics | 15% | 3% | 36 |
| 4 | QuestDB | 8% | 5% | 42 |
| 5 | Amazon Timestream | 3% | 17% | 36 |
| 6 | InfluxDB 3 Enterprise | 3% | 17% | 12 |
| 7 | ClickHouse Cloud | 0% | 13% | 39 |
| 8 | Thanos | 0% | 10% | 10 |
| 9 | Prometheus | 0% | 47% | 30 |
| 10 | OpenTSDB | 0% | 90% | 10 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: InfluxDB, TimescaleDB; alternatives CrateDB
- GPT-5.4 mini: TimescaleDB; alternatives Apache Druid, ClickHouse Cloud, InfluxDB 3 Enterprise, QuestDB
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: TimescaleDB; alternatives ClickHouse Cloud, InfluxDB
- Perplexity Sonar: TimescaleDB; alternatives InfluxDB, QuestDB
- Grok 4.1 Fast: InfluxDB; alternatives Amazon Timestream, Prometheus, TimescaleDB
- Mistral Small: QuestDB, TimescaleDB; alternatives Amazon Timestream
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: InfluxDB, TimescaleDB; alternatives Amazon Timestream, ClickHouse Cloud, Prometheus
- Llama 4 Maverick: QuestDB
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: TimescaleDB; alternatives Amazon Timestream, Azure Data Explorer, Google Cloud Monitoring, InfluxDB
- Kimi K2: TimescaleDB; alternatives InfluxDB
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: TimescaleDB; alternatives ClickHouse Cloud, InfluxDB 3 Enterprise, VictoriaMetrics
- MiniMax M2.5: no first choice
- GPT-6 Luna: TimescaleDB; alternatives ClickHouse Cloud, InfluxDB, VictoriaMetrics
- Muse Glimmer 30B: InfluxDB, TimescaleDB; alternatives QuestDB

## Sources the answers cite

78 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- tigerdata.com: 60 answers, 120 citations
- guideflow.com: 52 answers, 53 citations
- questdb.com: 43 answers, 53 citations
- influxdata.com: 42 answers, 84 citations
- mgsoftware.nl: 35 answers, 35 citations
- sourceforge.net: 28 answers, 41 citations
- viasocket.com: 26 answers, 33 citations
- clickhouse.com: 25 answers, 32 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://guideflow.com/blog/time-series-database-software (51 answers)
- https://tigerdata.com/learn/the-best-time-series-databases-compared (46 answers)
- https://mgsoftware.nl/en/tools/best-time-series-databases (35 answers)
- https://questdb.com/blog/best-time-series-databases (34 answers)
- https://clickhouse.com/resources/engineering/what-is-time-series-database (21 answers)
- https://sourceforge.net/software/time-series-databases (21 answers)
- https://viasocket.com/discovery/blog/0q7cxp/top-time-series-databases-for-real-time-analytics (20 answers)
- https://tigerdata.com/learn/best-managed-time-series-databases-in-2026 (19 answers)
- https://us.fitgap.com/search/time-series-databases/enterprise (18 answers)
- https://influxdata.com/comparison (16 answers)

## Warned against

- InfluxDB: 14 of 62 labels negative. "avoiding per-user pricing like the InfluxDB $25/user/month starting price shown in current lists" (Muse Glimmer 30B, budget prompt)
- Prometheus: 14 of 30 labels negative. "it's often best to avoid relying on Prometheus or older InfluxDB versions as your primary TSDB at scale" (Mistral Small, negative prompt)
- OpenTSDB: 9 of 10 labels negative. "depends on HBase underneath and introduces added operational overhead because the query layer is effectively separate" (Perplexity Sonar, negative prompt)
- PostgreSQL: 7 of 7 labels negative. "Not designed for time series: Performance degrades significantly beyond tens of millions of rows" (MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.