In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, milliseconds matter. Whether you’re powering industrial IoT platforms, processing geospatial sensor streams, or delivering AI-powered customer insights, low latency is key to real-time decision-making. At CrateDB, we understand that speed is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
In this blog post, we’ll break down what latency means in the context of CrateDB, why it matters, and how our architecture is purpose-built to deliver high-speed performance at scale.
What Do We Mean by Latency?
When we talk about "latency", we’re referring to how fast your system responds—but there are actually two types of latency to be aware of:
1. Query Latency (Response Time)
This is the most common meaning: the time it takes from issuing a query to receiving the result.
This includes query parsing and planning, reading and filtering data, performing aggregations or joins, returning the result to the user or application.
In CrateDB, query latency is optimized for real-time analytics, even on massive datasets.
2. Write Latency (Ingestion-to-Query Time)
This refers to: the time it takes for newly ingested data to become available for querying.
In CrateDB, this is usually under 1 second, thanks to our near-real-time indexing. The process includes: writing the data to disk, indexing it automatically, making it visible to queries via a lightweight refresh cycle (default every second).
That means you can write and query fresh data within seconds, without complex tuning.
Why Low Latency Matters
High-latency systems delay insights. In industrial, logistics, and machine data use cases, this can mean slow reactions to equipment failures, delayed anomaly detection, outdated dashboards or alerts, reduced user experience in applications.
In contrast, low latency unlocks instant alerting on IoT events: seamless UX for real-time dashboards, fast decision loops for AI-driven systems, better customer satisfaction and business agility.
How CrateDB Achieves Low Latency
CrateDB is engineered to deliver both low query latency and fast ingestion-to-query time. Here’s how:
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Distributed, shared-nothing architecture: Data is partitioned across nodes and processed in parallel. This ensures fast access even on large-scale datasets.
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Columnar storage for fast analytics: Only relevant columns are scanned, which speeds up aggregations and filtering.
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Automatic indexing: Every field is indexed by default, which reduces time spent tuning schemas or queries.
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Near-real-time refreshes: ingested data is visible to queries typically within 1 second. No need to manage complex refresh logic.
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Smart query planner: Uses cost-based optimization for efficient execution, which reduces manual tuning or query hints.
Real-World Latency: What You Can Expect
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Real-time dashboards: Sub-second query latency with streaming data
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Sensor data ingestion: Queryable within 1 second of arrival
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Geospatial analytics: Fast proximity and range queries with indexed location data
CrateDB is trusted by customers processing hundreds of thousands of records per second with sub-second query performance.
Measuring Latency in CrateDB
CrateDB provides built-in tools and APIs to help you monitor and optimize performance:
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Query profiling tools to examine execution plans
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System tables and metrics for tracking ingest and refresh cycles
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Cluster scaling to maintain speed as your data grows
You can also configure the refresh interval to control how quickly ingested data becomes visible—by default it’s 1 second, but you can tune it down if you need even faster visibility.
Benchmark Snapshot
In internal benchmarks simulating industrial time-series workloads:
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Ingest rate: >500,000 records/sec
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Write latency: ~1 second (ingested data visible for querying)
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Query latency: ~50ms for complex aggregations over 1 billion rows
These results were achieved with a 5-node cluster on commodity hardware using CrateDB Cloud.
Summary: Real-Time Speed, Built In
With CrateDB, low latency isn't something you have to engineer yourself—it’s part of the design. Whether you're building real-time monitoring systems, analytics dashboards, or AI pipelines, CrateDB gives you the speed, simplicity, and scale to power them effectively.
Want to see CrateDB latency in action? Try CrateDB Cloud or contact us for a personalized demo.
