UltraLogLog: A Practical and More Space-Efficient Alternative to HyperLogLog for Approximate Distinct Counting
Summary: UltraLogLog keeps HLL's mergeable, idempotent, commutative properties and O(1) inserts while encoding equivalent distinct-count information in ~28% less space via an MLE-extractable representation. A faster estimator still cuts space by ~24% (17% with martingale), uses 8-bit registers for better compression, and ships as a production Java implementation. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Otmar Ertl (Dynatrace)
BibTeX Citation
@article{ertl_vldb24,
title = {{UltraLogLog: A Practical and More Space-Efficient Alternative to HyperLogLog for Approximate Distinct Counting}},
author = {Ertl, Otmar},
journal = {PVLDB},
series = {{VLDB} '24},
volume = {17},
number = {7},
pages = {1655--1668},
doi = {10.14778/3654621.3654632},
url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3654621.3654632},
year = {2024}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 4 of 4 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,507 | Sublime: Sublinear Error & Space for Unbounded Skewed Streams | 2026 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 10,521 | A Fast, Mergeable, and LDP Compatible Sketch for Counting the Number of Distinct Values in Fully Dynamic Tables | 2026 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 11,192 | PLM4NDV: Minimizing Data Access for Number of Distinct Values Estimation with Pre-trained Language Models | 2025 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
| 11,219 | AdaNDV: Adaptive Number of Distinct Value Estimation via Learning to Select and Fuse Estimators | 2025 | VLDB | 4.9793485e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 5 of 5 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,852 | All-Distances Sketches, Revisited: HIP Estimators for Massive Graphs Analysis | 2014 | PODS | 7.9412916e-05 |
| 3,131 | Every Row Counts: Combining Sketches and Sampling for Accurate Group-By Result Estimates | 2019 | CIDR | 7.6141006e-05 |
| 5,108 | Efficient Estimation of Inclusion Coefficient using HyperLogLog Sketches | 2018 | VLDB | 6.2696201e-05 |
| 6,122 | Approximate Distinct Counts for Billions of Datasets | 2019 | SIGMOD | 5.879545e-05 |
| 7,074 | Better Cardinality Estimators for HyperLogLog, PCSA, and Beyond | 2023 | PODS | 5.6064198e-05 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8,638 | Query Log Compression for Workload Analytics | 2019 | VLDB |
| 2 | 7,074 | Better Cardinality Estimators for HyperLogLog, PCSA, and Beyond | 2023 | PODS |
| 3 | 13,014 | Join-Distinct Aggregate Estimation over Update Streams | 2005 | PODS |
| 4 | 7,507 | Adaptive Log Compression for Massive Log Data | 2013 | SIGMOD |
| 5 | 4,564 | Relative Error Streaming Quantiles | 2021 | PODS |
| 6 | 8,104 | Logging Every Footstep: Quantile Summaries for the Entire History | 2010 | SIGMOD |
| 7 | 83 | Space-Efficient Online Computation of Quantile Summaries | 2001 | SIGMOD |
| 8 | 5,987 | SetSketch: Filling the Gap between MinHash and HyperLogLog | 2021 | VLDB |
| 9 | 5,108 | Efficient Estimation of Inclusion Coefficient using HyperLogLog Sketches | 2018 | VLDB |
| 10 | 6,122 | Approximate Distinct Counts for Billions of Datasets | 2019 | SIGMOD |