Milvus vs ParadeDB
Milvus
milvus.io
ParadeDB
paradedb.comSide by side
| Figure | Milvus | ParadeDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.2 (#11) | 7.8 (#20) |
| Deployment options | Milvus offers Lite as a Python library, Standalone as a single-machine server, and Distributed for Kubernetes clusters. | Deployment choices include ParadeDB Cloud, BYOC, Kubernetes with CloudNativePG, self-hosted PostgreSQL, and listed PaaS providers. |
| Intended users | The documentation describes Distributed as suited to enterprise users running large-scale vector search systems in production. | The documentation identifies teams outgrowing PostgreSQL full-text search or pgvector, building transactional applications that need search, or syncing Postgres to an external search engine as likely fits. |
| Product | Milvus is an open-source vector database built for GenAI applications. | ParadeDB adds full-text and vector search, filters, facets, and joins to PostgreSQL. |
| Search features | Milvus supports approximate nearest neighbor, filtered, range, hybrid, and full-text search, as well as reranking and queries. | Its documented query capabilities include BM25 full-text search, vector and hybrid search, fuzzy, phrase, proximity and regex queries, filtering, sorting, and highlighting. |
| Support | The Milvus site lists community channels including Slack, Discord, GitHub, and Milvus Office Hours. | The company lists community support for Community and dedicated support with an SLA for Enterprise, and provides product support by email. |
Plans
In their own words
Milvus
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.
ParadeDB
ParadeDB adds full-text and vector search, filters, facets, and joins to PostgreSQL through the pg_search extension. It runs inside standard Postgres without a fork or sidecar process. Documented queries include BM25 full-text, vector and hybrid search, fuzzy, phrase, proximity, and regex searches, with filtering, sorting, and highlighting. Indexing covers columnar, vector, JSON, array, and composite data, alongside aggregates, facets, and joins. ParadeDB documents ACID transactions and consistent reads, with index updates applied alongside application-data writes. Deployment options include ParadeDB Cloud, BYOC, Kubernetes with CloudNativePG, self-hosted PostgreSQL, and listed PaaS providers. Local installation is documented through a curl installer, Docker, and Postgres.app, whose steps assume PostgreSQL 18. Community is AGPL-3.0 open source and supports single-node deployments; read replicas and high availability are Enterprise features. Community costs nothing, fully free forever. Cloud is in private preview with pricing not stated, while Enterprise uses custom pricing.