Vault compared with other ways to keep site data
There are excellent historians already. This is a fair account of where Vault fits beside them, and where one of the others is the better choice.
| Vault | Enterprise historian (e.g. AVEVA PI) | Mid-market historian (e.g. Canary) | SCADA platform module (e.g. Ignition) | Open-source stack (e.g. InfluxDB + Grafana) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed by | Site, unlimited signals | Tag count, with client and interface licences | Tag count, perpetual or subscription | Server, unlimited tags | Free; you own the running of it |
| What you install | One Windows program | Servers, interfaces, clients, often a team | A Windows historian and collectors | The platform and its historian module (built-in Core Historian, or an SQL database) | A database, a collector and a dashboard, usually on Linux |
| Database to run | None (built in) | Its own archive | Its own storage | Built-in or an SQL database | Yes |
| Gaps and quality | Stored with every value; gaps never drawn across | Yes, mature | Yes | Depends on the storage chosen | Up to whoever builds it |
| Fleet and redundancy | Not yet | Yes, the strongest | Yes | Yes | Possible, built by you |
| Best for | One site, one PC, logging this month | Portfolios and enterprise-wide analytics | Mid-sized estates wanting a dedicated historian | Sites that also need HMI and SCADA | Teams with time and in-house skills |
Product names are trademarks of their owners and are used here only to describe categories of product. Licensing models are as published by each vendor in October 2026 and change; check the vendor's own pricing pages, for example Canary and Inductive Automation, before deciding.
When Vault is the right call
- You need history on one site, soon, without a project.
- The site already has a PC in the panel and nobody to run a database.
- The signal count is large and per-tag pricing makes the quote unworkable.
- You want the record in open files the operator owns.
When something else is
- You need one historian across a fleet, with redundancy, today.
- You need MQTT Sparkplug B, IEC 104, IEC 61850 or DNP3 collected directly.
- You want HMI screens and control in the same product.
- Your organisation has standardised on an enterprise historian already.
Not sure which fits your site?
Tell us what you are logging and where, and we will say honestly whether Vault is the right tool.