Create your first Cloud service and load example data

Create a ClickHouse Cloud service, explore the SQL console, and load an example dataset to start querying real data in minutes.

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BeginnerReal-Time AnalyticsData WarehousingObservabilityAI/MLCloud

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this quickstart

What you’ll build

In this quickstart you’ll create your first ClickHouse Cloud service, familiarize yourself with the Cloud console and the built-in SQL console, and load an example dataset so you have real data to query. By the end, you’ll have a running ClickHouse Cloud service with data loaded, ready to use as a foundation for the rest of the quickstart series.

1. Sign up for ClickHouse Cloud

   Navigate to console.clickhouse.cloud. You’ll see the sign-in page. Click Register next to “Don’t have an account yet?” at the bottom.

   

   On the registration page, sign up with Google, Microsoft, or enter your business email. No credit card is required - the free trial gives you $300 in credits and 30 days to explore ClickHouse Cloud.

   

   If you sign up with email, you’ll be asked to set a password. It must meet the following requirements:

   • At least 12 characters
   • At least 3 of: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, special characters (e.g. !@#$%^&*)

   

   Accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, then click Sign up. Check your email for the confirmation link and click Verify email to activate your account.

   Once verified, sign in with your new email and password.

2. Create a new service

   After signing in for the first time, you’ll be taken straight to the service configuration page. Configure the following:

   Setting	Recommendation
   Service name	Give your service a descriptive name (e.g. My first service)
   Cloud provider	Choose AWS, GCP, or Azure based on your preference
   Region	Select the region closest to you for lowest latency
   Memory and scaling	Select Mini 12GB (1 replica) for this quickstart - it’s the most cost-effective option for learning

   Click Create service to provision your service.

   

   You’ll land on the service home page where the status will initially show as Provisioning. This typically takes under a minute. Once complete, the status will change to Running.

   
3. Load an example dataset

   Click Data sources in the left sidebar. You’ll see several options for getting data into your service.

   

   Click Add sample data to browse the available example datasets. You’ll see three options: Cell Towers, UK Property Price Paid, and New York Taxi Data. Click Get started on the UK Property Price Paid dataset.

   

   You’ll see a preview of the data with the table schema. Click Import dataset to load the data into your service.

   

   The import will take a minute or two. Once complete, you’re ready to query the data.

4. Query the data

   Click SQL Console in the left sidebar to open the built-in query editor. This is where you’ll write and run SQL queries directly in your browser - no external tools needed.

   Try a few queries to explore the UK property price data.

   Find the most expensive properties ever sold:

   SELECT
       town,
       district,
       county,
       price,
       date
   FROM pp_complete
   ORDER BY price DESC
   LIMIT 5;
   

   Find the average sale price by year:

   SELECT
       toYear(date) AS year,
       round(avg(price)) AS avg_price,
       formatReadableQuantity(count()) AS sales
   FROM pp_complete
   GROUP BY year
   ORDER BY year DESC;
   

   These queries scan millions of rows in seconds - that’s ClickHouse’s columnar storage and compression at work.

Next steps

You now have a running ClickHouse Cloud service with 30 million rows of real data loaded. This service and dataset are used throughout the rest of the quickstart series.

Check out the following quickstarts next:

• Obtain your Cloud connection details
• Create your first MergeTree table
• Insert data using clickhouse-client

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