Milvus vs Qdrant

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.

Qdrant is a vector similarity search engine and API for storing, searching, and managing vectors with payload data. A point can pair a vector with JSON metadata that filters search results. It supports dense, sparse, and multivector configurations, plus hybrid retrieval that combines semantic and lexical search. These capabilities can serve semantic search and recommendation systems. Qdrant can run locally with its Docker image or through Qdrant Cloud. REST and gRPC APIs are available, along with official client libraries for Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Rust, Go, .NET, and Java. Listed integrations include LangChain, LlamaIndex, Airbyte, Unstructured, DocArray, and AutoGen. The free cloud tier is intended for testing and prototypes, with a single-node cluster, 1GB RAM, and 4GB disk. Qdrant Cloud enables TLS and encryption at rest; self-hosted users must configure these controls, and authentication and encryption are off by default in self-hosted open-source deployments. Qdrant was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.