Milvus vs Neon

Milvus is an open-source vector database from Zilliz for GenAI and scalable vector search. It supports approximate-nearest-neighbor, filtered, range, hybrid, and full-text search, along with reranking, fetch, and query operations. Metadata filtering, sparse vectors, and index types including HNSW, IVF, FLAT, DiskANN, and SCANN are documented. Deployment choices are Milvus Lite as a Python library, Standalone as a single-machine server, and Distributed on Kubernetes. Documentation recommends Lite for up to a few million vectors, Standalone up to 100 million, and Distributed for 100 million to tens of billions. Lite can run locally without a cloud service for private or sensitive data; an online upgrade from Standalone to a cluster is not currently supported. Official interfaces include REST plus Python, Go, Java, Node.js, and C++ APIs or SDKs. C# is contributed by Microsoft and Rust is under development. Security documentation covers authentication, TLS for gRPC and REST, and role-based access control at collection, database, and instance levels. The Apache 2.0 software is free, and Zilliz Cloud is offered as a managed option.

Neon is a managed, cloud-hosted PostgreSQL service for relational databases. It adjusts compute resources to workload and can suspend compute during inactivity, restarting it when database activity resumes. Database branches are isolated, can be created in about a second, and share data through copy-on-write storage. Neon supports connection pooling through PgBouncer, read replicas, high availability, point-in-time recovery, JSON data, and seven-day backup retention. An API lets teams manage projects and databases programmatically. Documented workflows include Vercel, Prisma, Drizzle ORM, GitHub Actions, and its CLI. The Free plan is free, with 10 projects, 50 CU-hours per month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, 10 branches per project, and 5 GB monthly egress. Launch is $0.11 a month, billed at $0.106 per CU-hour; Scale is $0.22 a month, billed at $0.222 per CU-hour. Neon states that stored data is encrypted with AES-256 and data in transit uses TLS 1.2 or higher. It says it joined Databricks in May 2025 and is now part of the Databricks Platform.