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The enterprise-grade DuckDB server

DuckDB can now run as a server — but a production server needs auth, multi-tenancy, observability, and scale. Hardcharger is the enterprise-grade layer in front of DuckDB — secure, instrumented, multi-tenant, and horizontally scalable, over Chargewire.

DuckDB can be a server. Hardcharger makes it enterprise-grade.

Everything a production server needs above the wire — auth, governance, multi-tenancy, and scale.

Mature client tooling, day one

Hardcharger uses Chargewire over HTTP, with native ADBC, JDBC and JavaScript clients. Use dbt-hardcharger for dbt and the Hardcharger MCP server for AI assistants. Check SQL dialect differences and client compatibility when migrating.

Enterprise security & governance

Hardcharger is Apache-2.0 with every feature included: access control, SSO, audit logging and the web UI. There are no editions, license keys or per-vCPU software fees. You pay for your infrastructure and any optional managed services or support.

Horizontally scalable

Use concurrent sessions on one server, or deploy multiple servers against a shared DuckLake catalog with a PostgreSQL metastore. Validate capacity with your own workload.

On DuckDB’s Quack protocol

We helped blaze this trail — and we welcome Quack

In 2026, DuckDB Labs introduced Quack, a native client-server protocol for DuckDB. We’re fans — and in their launch post, the DuckDB team kindly credited us:

“We also want to thank Philip Moore from GizmoSQL / GizmoData, who has blazed this trail for us already and shown that client-server DuckDB is a very worthwhile thing.”— DuckDB Labs, announcing Quack

Quack connects DuckDB clients to DuckDB servers. Hardcharger uses Chargewire over HTTP, with Arrow results and access control, SSO, auditing and a built-in web UI included under Apache-2.0. Choose the protocol and clients that fit your workload.

Measured performance

Derived from TPC-H: 22 queries at scale factor 1000 (1 TB)

Total seconds, lower is better. AWS r9gd.24xlarge (Graviton5, 96 vCPU, 742 GiB, 3 × 1.9 TB NVMe), AWS on-demand at $7.69/h. Measured October 20, 2026.

GizmoSQL 1.42.0 · DuckDB 1.5.677.0 s · $0.164
Hardcharger 2.0.0 · DuckDB 2.0.042.4 s · $0.090

Cost per full run: the run’s seconds at the machine’s AWS on-demand price; a cloud cost, not a TPC price/performance metric. Same machine type and data for every server.

This workload is derived from the TPC-H Benchmark and is not comparable to published TPC-H Benchmark results, as this implementation does not comply with all requirements of the TPC-H Benchmark. Deviations: only the 22 queries are run (no refresh functions, no power or throughput test), timed as the sum of per-query means over three runs, without an audit. TPC, TPC Benchmark and TPC-H are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC).

Read these with the numbers

Hardcharger uses DuckDB 2.0.0; the historical GizmoSQL baseline uses DuckDB 1.5.6. The performance difference includes changes in the engine and does not isolate the effect of the server protocol.
The Hardcharger client ran on the same machine over TLS (127.0.0.1). The answers are a few rows each, so the network adds little.
Cold first runs are included in the means (page cache dropped and server restarted between passes). The DuckDB 1.5.6 row is a historical baseline from an earlier run.
Query 11 uses its generator’s fixed fraction, not one scaled to the data size, so it returns no rows on every server.
Defaults only: 96 threads, DuckDB’s default memory limit, nothing tuned. A second full pass came within 2% of the first, and every Hardcharger query returned the expected row count.

DuckDB server — FAQ

Can DuckDB be used as a server?

DuckDB can run as a server through its native Quack protocol or through Hardcharger over Chargewire. Hardcharger adds concurrent sessions, TLS, access control, SSO, audit logging and a built-in web UI, with ADBC, JDBC and JavaScript clients.

Isn’t DuckDB a server now, with the Quack protocol?

Yes. Quack is DuckDB’s native client-server protocol. Hardcharger is a separate DuckDB 2.0 server over Chargewire, an open HTTP protocol with Apache Arrow results. Both provide remote DuckDB access; compare their clients, security and operational features for your workload.

Is DuckDB production-ready for concurrent users?

Hardcharger supports concurrent sessions with roles, grants, row policies, column masking and tenants. Size and benchmark the server for your workloads. Multiple servers can share DuckLake data with a PostgreSQL metastore; that does not make a single query distributed.

How do I run DuckDB as a server?

Install Hardcharger and start hardcharger-server with --database pointing at a DuckDB database file. Configure the admin password and TLS, then connect with the Hardcharger ADBC, JDBC or JavaScript client. See gizmodata.com/hardcharger/install.

Is the Hardcharger DuckDB server open source?

How fast is Hardcharger?

Our 1 TB workload derived from TPC-H ran all 22 queries in 42.4 seconds for $0.09 of AWS compute on one machine with Hardcharger 2.0.0. Infrastructure, storage and managed-service costs vary; measure your own workloads.