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Comparison · Analytics
Citus vs Holistics
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Citus and Holistics — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Citus vs Holistics: at a glance
What is Citus?
Citus is in maintenance mode across four branches, with the feature work invisible from the feed.
Citus is the Postgres extension that shards tables across a cluster, and its release feed right now is almost entirely branch upkeep. Four lines are live at once — 12.1, 13.3, 14.0 and 14.1 — and the recent tags are backports and CI fixes moving between them, authored by a small handful of maintainers. The last release with user-facing feature text is Citus 14.0 in February, which added PostgreSQL 18.1 support and pointed at a blog post rather than listing what changed.
What is Holistics?
Holistics lets admins put a key dashboard on everyone's Home page.
Holistics is shipping weekly changes on both the modeling and consumption sides of its BI product. Recent modeling work added Data Lineage in the IDE, two-way conversion between AML and Apache Ossie, and branches in place of the Production/Development switch. For viewers it added field descriptions on hover, in-dashboard trend and reference lines, and now an admin-configurable Home with a full-view dashboard and pinned shortcuts.
Citus vs Holistics: editorial side-by-side
Citus
2.5ANALYTICS
Citus is in maintenance mode across four branches, with the feature work invisible from the feed.
◆ Current state
Citus is the Postgres extension that shards tables across a cluster, and its release feed right now is almost entirely branch upkeep. Four lines are live at once — 12.1, 13.3, 14.0 and 14.1 — and the recent tags are backports and CI fixes moving between them, authored by a small handful of maintainers. The last release with user-facing feature text is Citus 14.0 in February, which added PostgreSQL 18.1 support and pointed at a blog post rather than listing what changed.
◆ Where it's heading
The shape here is a mature extension keeping several supported branches alive rather than pushing new capability. Correctness is the live concern: the 12.1 patches fix wrong query results, an EXPLAIN segfault, a standby coordinator crash and a deadlock, all backported from work done on newer branches. Note that the release notes are thin by design — 13.3 and 14.1 list only PR titles for backports and test plumbing, so the feed understates whatever is landing on the main line.
◆ Prediction
More 12.1 patch tags are the safe expectation while that branch stays supported. Whether the 14.x line picks up new distributed-query features is not visible from these entries — the notes only cover backports, so the main-branch work would have to be read elsewhere.
Holistics
6.3ANALYTICS
Holistics lets admins put a key dashboard on everyone's Home page.
◆ Current state
Holistics is shipping weekly changes on both the modeling and consumption sides of its BI product. Recent modeling work added Data Lineage in the IDE, two-way conversion between AML and Apache Ossie, and branches in place of the Production/Development switch. For viewers it added field descriptions on hover, in-dashboard trend and reference lines, and now an admin-configurable Home with a full-view dashboard and pinned shortcuts.
◆ Where it's heading
The release stream keeps putting analysis and context where business users already are, on dashboards and Home, rather than sending them into Explore. Modeling changes meanwhile make the semantic layer more portable and more like a code workflow.
◆ Prediction
Expect further admin-level controls over what viewers see first, and more semantic-layer metadata surfaced on dashboards.
Alternatives to Citus and Holistics
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Citus or Holistics.
OpenReplay
OpenReplay moves its Go backend to pgx v5 and patches vulnerable deps across 1.25–1.27.
Basedash
Basedash automations can now attach scheduled CSV exports to Slack and email.
OpenPanel
OpenPanel tags three more note-free builds in one evening, reaching 3.16.4.
Fulcrum
Fulcrum turns on Insights, its AI assistant for field data, for every customer.
OpenHouse
OpenHouse locks down its column-defaults capability flag as default values near completion.
See all Citus alternatives → · See all Holistics alternatives →
Recent activity from Citus and Holistics
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoHolisticsPick your own color for the "Others" chart group
- 3d agoHolisticsCustom homepage: put key dashboards where everyone lands
- 9d agoHolisticsDashboard viewers see field descriptions on column hover
- 10d agoHolisticsData Lineage panel traces models and dashboards in the IDE
- 12d agoHolisticsAML converts to and from Apache Ossie semantic models
- 15d agoHolisticsBranch selector replaces the Production/Development mode switch
- 2mo agoCitus12.1.14 fixes wrong results, an EXPLAIN segfault and a standby crash
- 3mo agoCitusCitus 14.1 ships as a backport and CI maintenance release
- 4mo agoCitus12.1.13 fixes a deadlock, crashes and internal UDF ownership
- 4mo agoCitusCitus 13.3 lands as a backport-only release on the 13.x line
- 8mo agoCitusCitus 14.0 adds PostgreSQL 18.1 support
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Citus and Holistics?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Holistics is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Citus better than Holistics?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Holistics is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Citus?
Top Citus alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Citus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/citus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Holistics?
Top Holistics alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Holistics alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/holistics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.