Skip to content
Database

Citus to DuckDB integration — real-time, two-way sync

Keep Citus and DuckDB in sync without custom scripts. Cut weeks of integration work, eliminate silent data drift, and give your team a single, reliable source of truth.

  • SOC 2 and 6 other compliance frameworks
  • POC with real engineers in minutes

Adopted by fast-scaling companies moving mission-critical data in real time

Case study
Migrated from Mulesoft
Case study
Migrated from Celigo
Migrated from Heroku Connect
Migrated from Matillion
Case study
Migrated from Fivetran
Case study
Migrated from Celigo
Why teams connect Citus and DuckDB

Keep Citus and DuckDB synchronized in real time, across engines, regions, or services, in one or both directions.

Two databases that must agree is one of the oldest problems in engineering: different engines for different workloads, separate services with overlapping reference data, a migration in flight, or regional instances that share a subset of records. Hand-rolled replication across systems means change capture, conflict handling, and type mapping, all built and maintained by your team.

Stacksync syncs tables or collections between Citus and DuckDB continuously and bi-directionally, translating types between the two engines and resolving conflicts by rules you configure. Rows written on either side appear on the other within seconds.

Common use cases

  • Consolidate per-tenant rows from distributed tables into per-customer reporting databases.
  • Sync high-volume event or tenant data from a Citus cluster into a warehouse for cross-tenant analytics.
  • Use DuckDB as a transform step: read synced Parquet exports, aggregate with SQL, and write results back to an operational database.
  • Sync SaaS data to Parquet on object storage and query it with DuckDB without standing up a warehouse.

Shared reference data between services

Services that own separate databases stay consistent on the records they share, without a custom replication layer.

Regional or environment copies

Mirror selected tables to another region or environment continuously, filtered to just the rows that should travel.

Cross-engine sync

Keep the same dataset live in both Citus and DuckDB, so each workload runs on the engine that suits it.

What you can sync between Citus and DuckDB

Representative objects on each side — any object or custom field can map to any target. Schemas are auto-detected; types are converted between the two systems.

Citus objects DuckDB objects
Reference tables Small lookup tables replicated to every node, synced like ordinary Postgres tables. Database files Single-file .duckdb databases that jobs read and write directly on disk or object storage.
Local tables Coordinator-only tables that behave exactly like standard PostgreSQL tables. Schemas Namespaces within a database used to organize tables in sync outputs.
Schemas Standard Postgres namespaces used to scope what a sync user can read and write. Tables Columnar tables created via SQL; the destination for materialized sync data.
Views Curated projections over distributed data, often used as read-only sync sources. Views SQL views used to shape or filter data for downstream consumers.
Sequences Key generators that matter when external writes must not collide with application inserts. External files (Parquet/CSV/JSON) Files DuckDB queries in place without loading, common as a sync interchange format.
Distributed tables Tables sharded across worker nodes by a distribution column; the main sync target for large datasets. Attached databases Additional database files or external systems attached into one session for cross-source queries.
What ships with Citus ⇄ DuckDB

Connect Citus and DuckDB for flexible, real-time data sync.

Real-time sync, workflow automation, event queues, EDI, and monitoring, for every Citus–DuckDB connection.

Real-time

Two-way sync

Changes in Citus or DuckDB instantly reflect in both systems. No stale data, no manual imports.

No-code + pro-code

Workflow automation

Trigger automated workflows whenever Citus or DuckDB data changes, update records, fire webhooks, or kick off sequences without brittle API scripts.

At scale

Event queues

Handle millions of events per minute without losing a single Citus or DuckDB record.

Observability

Monitoring

Track your Citus ⇄ DuckDB sync health, view errors, and replay failed events in one click.

Trading partners

EDI

Transform legacy EDI complexity into simple database interactions between Citus and DuckDB.

How the Citus and DuckDB connectors work

Citus

Integration surface
PostgreSQL wire protocol; any standard Postgres driver connects to the coordinator node
Authentication
Database credentials (standard PostgreSQL authentication; managed deployments add cloud IAM options)
Change detection
PostgreSQL logical decoding / CDC, with caveats: changes to distributed tables occur on worker shards, so CDC setup differs from single-node Postgres
Capabilities
read · write · CDC

DuckDB

Integration surface
In-process SQL engine via client libraries (Python, Node.js, JDBC, CLI); no server or network API by default
Authentication
None built in; access control is file-system level (MotherDuck adds token auth for its hosted service)
Change detection
Polling or full re-reads; no change feed or transaction log API
Capabilities
read · write
Rate limits
No API rate limits; throughput is bounded by local compute and I/O
How it works

How to connect Citus to DuckDB — three steps, no code

Configure and sync within minutes, no code. Whether you sync 50k or 100M+ records, Stacksync handles the queues, infra, and plumbing. Integrations are non-invasive and need zero setup on your systems.

  1. 01

    Connect your apps

    Authenticate Citus and DuckDB with each platform's native method — OAuth, API keys, or service accounts — plus secure options like SSH tunneling, IP whitelisting, and VPC peering.

    • OAuth 2.0
    • SSH tunnel
    • VPC peering
    Citus connected
    DuckDB connected
    OAuth 2.0
    SSH tunnel
    SSL certificate
    VPC peering
  2. 02

    Choose tables

    Pick the Citus and DuckDB objects to sync — Stacksync auto-detects both schemas, including custom fields where the platform exposes them. Sync to existing tables, or let Stacksync create new ones with ideal data types.

    • Standard objects
    • Custom objects
    • Auto-schema
    objects · Citus ⇄ DuckDB
    Customers 12,480
    Sales Orders 8,213
    Invoices 5,902
    Items 1,344
  3. 03

    Map fields

    Fields map automatically even when names and types differ. Stacksync handles transformation and type casting for you, zero configuration required.

    • Auto-map
    • Type casting
    • Transforms
    Citus DuckDB
    Company company_name text
    Email email text
    Amount amount numeric
    Created created_at timestamp
Try interactive demo
FAQ

Citus and DuckDB integration FAQ

SECURITY

Security teams love Stacksync

As a data company, we understand the importance of keeping your data secure. Stacksync is built with security best practices to keep your data safe at every layer, and is DPF-certified for US, EU, UK and CH data transfers.

Learn more about security
SOC 2 type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA BAA
GDPR
CCPA
CSA STAR
DPF US-EU-UK-CH
→ SECURITY WITH BENEFITS

SSO & SCIM

Let your users access Stacksync from your centralized user management systems. Works with Okta, Azure, Google SSO and more.

Alerts

Immediately get alerted about record syncing issues over email, Slack, PagerDuty and WhatsApp. Resolve issues from a centralized dashboard with retry and revert options.

Secure connection options

Securely connects to your systems with:

OAuth 2 SSH Tunnelling SSL certificates IP Whitelisting VPN gateway VPC peering and more

Related integrations

Every pair below is a real-time, two-way sync. Search all 386 integrations available for Citus and DuckDB.

Popular · 8 of 386
All Citus integrations All DuckDB integrations Browse all integrations
Coworkers laughing in front of a laptop in a casual office setting

Your last integration took months.
Your next one takes a prompt.

Book a demo Tour the platform on your own