Milvus vs Typesense
Milvus
milvus.io
Typesense
typesense.orgSide by side
| Figure | Milvus | Typesense |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $22/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 8 |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.2 (#11) | 8.0 (#14) |
| Spec score · Search & Vector Database Platforms | 8.3 (#9) | 8.1 (#10) |
| Deployment | Milvus offers Lite as a Python library, Standalone as a single-machine server, and Distributed for Kubernetes clusters. | Typesense can be run locally or on a server, and Typesense Cloud provides a hosted version. |
| Integrations | The integrations documentation lists tools including LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, DSPy, Dify, Langflow, OpenAI, Cohere, and HuggingFace. | Listed integrations include Firebase, AWS Amplify, Laravel Scout, LangChain, LlamaIndex, InstantSearch, OpenAI, and Google ML platforms. |
| Maker | The documentation says Milvus was developed by Zilliz and is associated with the LF AI & Data Foundation under the Linux Foundation. | Typesense, Inc. describes itself as a lean, customer-funded team of engineers focused on making search technology accessible. |
| Product | Milvus is an open-source vector database built for GenAI applications. | Typesense is an open-source, typo-tolerant search engine for instant, typically sub-50ms, search-as-you-type experiences. |
| Search features | Milvus supports approximate nearest neighbor, filtered, range, hybrid, and full-text search, as well as reranking and queries. | It supports typo tolerance, tunable ranking, sorting, faceting, filtering, grouping, federated search, and geo search. |
| Security | Milvus documents user authentication, TLS encryption for gRPC and REST traffic, and role-based access control. | Typesense Cloud says clusters are isolated and dedicated, API traffic is encrypted over HTTPS, and data is protected with full-disk encryption at rest. |
| Support | The Milvus site lists community channels including Slack, Discord, GitHub, and Milvus Office Hours. | Typesense offers community support through GitHub Issues and public Slack, plus paid prioritized support with SLAs, consulting, and training for Cloud. |
Plans
Typesense
- Self-hostedFree
- Typesense Cloud$22 a month
- Free supportFree
- Typesense Cloud cluster$22 a month
- Developer support$160 a month
- Business support$400 a month
- Enterprise support$700 a month
- Enterprise Signature support$1,900 a month
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.
Typesense
Typesense is an open-source search engine for adding search to a website or app using data you supply; it does not crawl the web. It is designed for typo-tolerant, search-as-you-type results, typically in under 50 milliseconds. Search tools include tunable ranking, sorting, faceting, filtering, grouping, federated search and geo search. Listed AI capabilities include vector and hybrid search, built-in RAG, natural-language, image and voice search.
You can run it locally or on a server, or use hosted Typesense Cloud. Its REST API has listed integrations including Firebase, AWS Amplify, Laravel Scout, LangChain, LlamaIndex, InstantSearch, OpenAI and Google ML platforms. Typesense offers a free plan; Cloud clusters start at $22 a month. Cloud billing includes cluster runtime and bandwidth, and the hourly cluster fee continues while a cluster runs without traffic. The one-time free Cloud tier applies to select configurations and does not renew monthly.