# InfluxDB 3

Line-protocol time-series database rewritten on Arrow, DataFusion and Parquet.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/influxdb · Tick Data Storage & Time-Series Databases*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | InfluxData |
| Category | Tick Data Storage & Time-Series Databases |
| Job | tick_storage |
| Website | https://www.influxdata.com |
| Pricing model | subscription |
| Free tier | true |
| Open source | true |
| Licence | MIT OR Apache-2.0 (Core only — Enterprise is commercially licensed and its source is not in the public repository) |
| Self-hosted | true |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-19 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Core (open source) | 0 USD | month |
| Enterprise, at-home licence | 0 USD | month |
| Enterprise, commercial licence | on request | — |
| Cloud Serverless | on request | — |
| Cloud Dedicated | on request | — |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | none |
| Markets | none |
| Works outside the US | false |
| Data latency | none |
| Platforms | web, cli |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | true |
| Webhooks | false |
| Scripting | SQL |
| Python | true |
| Spreadsheet add-in | false |
| MCP server | true |
| Export | csv, json, api |

### Capabilities

Yes: none

No: charting, screening, scanning, backtesting, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, broker_import, tax_reporting, alerts, news, options_analysis

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-19; capabilities 2026-09-19; coverage 2026-09-19.*

## What it is

InfluxDB 3 is the third engine to carry the name and shares almost nothing with the first two. It
is written in Rust on what InfluxData calls the FDAP stack — Apache Flight, DataFusion, Arrow and
Parquet — so rows arrive as line protocol, land in a write-ahead log, and persist as Parquet files
on local disk or S3-compatible object storage. Queries are SQL through DataFusion, or InfluxQL for
the 1.x-era clients that still exist.

The rewrite fixed the thing that disqualified InfluxDB for market data. In 1.x and 2.x every
distinct tag combination became an indexed series held in memory, so a per-symbol, per-venue schema
blew up the cardinality budget. Parquet has no in-memory series index; selectivity comes from
row-group statistics, and cardinality stops being the number you design around. What replaces it
as the number to watch is file count.

Core is generally available since April 2025 and shipping steadily, with v3.11.5 published in
September 2026. It is a real database with real caps: 5 databases, 2000 tables across all of them,
500 columns per table, one node, and no compactor, so the small Parquet files it writes are never
merged into larger ones.

## Pricing

Core is free and permissively licensed; the paid line starts where Core's caps bite. Enterprise
adds compaction, historical query performance, high availability, read replicas and multi-node
clustering, and it is sold per CPU core in batches of 8 to 128 with no published figure — the only
public numbers on the licence page are the trial's 30 days and 256-core ceiling and the at-home
licence's two cores.

The managed side is where prices are actually printed. Cloud Serverless meters four dimensions
separately — bytes written, queries executed, GB-hours stored and bytes out — which for a tick
workload makes the storage and write lines the ones to model before signing up. Cloud Dedicated is
a quote.

## Data & coverage

None. InfluxDB ships no market data; every tick in it is one you wrote.

## Integrations

Line protocol over HTTP is the write path, compatible with 1.x and 2.x clients and with Telegraf.
Reads come back over Flight SQL, an HTTP query API or the CLI. An embedded Python virtual machine
runs plugins and triggers inside the database on write or on a schedule, which is how you
downsample ticks to bars without a separate job runner. InfluxData publishes its own MCP server —
`@influxdata/influxdb3-mcp-server` on npm, and note that the unscoped `influxdb-mcp-server` name
belongs to an unrelated community project. The Python client is `influxdb3-python`, maintained in
InfluxData's community organisation rather than the main repository.

## Limitations

- **No `ASOF JOIN`.** The SQL reference documents inner, left, right and full joins and nothing
  else, so every trade-to-quote match is a window function or a lateral you write and tune.
- **Core has no compactor**, which is the real meaning of the 72-hour figure — long-range queries
  read hundreds of small files, and the fix is a licence rather than a setting.
- **Five databases and 2000 tables** is a low ceiling if your instinct is a table per symbol.
- **Schema is line protocol's**, tags and fields, not arbitrary SQL DDL — a tick schema has to be
  expressed in that shape before anything else works.
- **The free Enterprise tier bars commercial use**, so a one-person trading business is on Core or
  on a contract, not on the at-home licence.
- **No market data, no symbology, no corporate actions.**

## Alternatives

[QuestDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/questdb) is the closest substitute and the better fit here — it also takes line
protocol, and it has `ASOF JOIN`, `SAMPLE BY` and `LATEST ON` under Apache-2.0 with no database or
table caps. [ClickHouse](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/clickhouse) for wide historical scans;
[TimescaleDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/timescaledb) if the rest of the stack is Postgres;
[DuckDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/duckdb) if nothing is streaming in and a file is enough.

See the rest of the [tick data storage category](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/tick-data-storage).

## FAQ

### Is InfluxDB 3 open source, and under what licence?

Core is, dual-licensed MIT or Apache-2.0 — both licence files sit at the root of the repository's main branch, and that branch is Core. Enterprise is a commercial product whose source is not published there, so "open source" describes one of the two builds, not the product line.

### What is the 72-hour limit people mention?

A file cap, not a retention cap. Core's query-file-limit defaults to 432 Parquet files, which at ten-minute persistence works out to roughly 72 hours of data in a single query. Older data stays on disk and stays queryable in smaller windows, and the limit is configurable — raising it costs memory and speed, because Core has no compactor to merge those files.

### Is InfluxDB 3 a reasonable place to put tick data?

For storing and charting a live feed, yes — it ingests line protocol fast, keeps Parquet on object storage and no longer punishes high tag cardinality the way 1.x and 2.x did. For research it is weaker than its rivals here, because the SQL dialect documents only the four standard joins and has no ASOF JOIN, so trade-to-quote matching is yours to write.

### Does the free Enterprise licence cover a small business?

No. The at-home licence never expires and includes compaction, but it is two CPU cores, single node, and the documentation restricts it to non-commercial use. Commercial use of Enterprise means the trial or a contract.

### What happened to InfluxDB 1.x, 2.x and Flux?

They still exist on their own branches — 1.x was MIT, and in 2016 InfluxData moved clustering out of the open-source build into a commercial one. InfluxDB 3 is a rewrite in Rust that speaks SQL and InfluxQL, accepts 1.x and 2.x line-protocol writes, and drops Flux.

## Also worth comparing

- [ArcticDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/arcticdb.md) — Versioned Pandas frames written straight onto S3, with no server to run.
- [DolphinDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/dolphindb.md) — Closed-source tick database with a vector language, as-of joins and streaming engines.
- [kdb+](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/kdb.md) — The tick database trading desks have run for 25 years, queried in q rather than SQL.
- [OneTick](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/onetick.md) — Enterprise tick capture, storage and streaming analytics, sold only by quote.
- [QuestDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/questdb.md) — Open-source time-series SQL built for tick data — ASOF JOIN, SAMPLE BY, LATEST ON.
- [Apache Druid](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/druid.md) — Real-time OLAP cluster built for high-concurrency dashboards, not for research joins.