Quick install

Run the following command to download a single binary for your operating system.

curl https://clickhouse.com/ | sh

On Linux and macOS, this also installs clickhousectl, the ClickHouse CLI, into ~/.local/bin (with a chctl alias). clickhousectl helps you install and manage multiple local ClickHouse versions, run servers in the background, and manage ClickHouse Cloud. See the clickhousectl install page for the CLI-based workflow.

To install just the clickhouse binary without clickhousectl, set CLICKHOUSE_ONLY=1:

curl https://clickhouse.com/ | CLICKHOUSE_ONLY=1 sh

clickhouse-local allows you to process local and remote files using ClickHouse’s powerful SQL syntax and without the need for configuration. Table data is stored in a temporary location, meaning that after a restart of clickhouse-local previously created tables are no longer available.

Run the following command to start clickhouse-local:

./clickhouse

Should you wish to persist data, you’ll want to run clickhouse-server. You can start the ClickHouse server using the following command:

./clickhouse server

With the server up and running, open a new terminal window and run the following command to launch clickhouse-client:

./clickhouse client

You will see something like this:

./clickhouse client
ClickHouse client version 24.5.1.117 (official build).
Connecting to localhost:9000 as user default.
Connected to ClickHouse server version 24.5.1.

local-host :)

Table data is stored in the current directory and will still be available after a restart of the ClickHouse server. If necessary, you can pass -C config.xml as an additional command line argument to ./clickhouse server and provide further configuration in a configuration file. All available configuration settings are documented here and in the example configuration file template.

You’re now ready to start sending SQL commands to ClickHouse!