Milvus vs Weaviate
Milvus
milvus.ioWeaviate
weaviate.ioSide by side
| Figure | Milvus | Weaviate |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $45/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 8.3 (#8) | 8.0 (#16) |
| Spec score · Vector Databases | 8.2 (#7) | 8.0 (#10) |
| Spec score · AI Search and Discovery Platforms Software | 8.1 (#9) | 8.0 (#12) |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.2 (#11) | 8.0 (#15) |
| Spec score · Database Software | 8.2 (#39) | 8.0 (#51) |
| Deployment | Milvus offers Lite as a Python library, Standalone as a single-machine server, and Distributed for Kubernetes clusters. | Weaviate can run as a hosted service or a self-managed instance locally or with a cloud provider; deployment options include Docker and Kubernetes. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The integrations documentation lists tools including LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, DSPy, Dify, Langflow, OpenAI, Cohere, and HuggingFace. | The integration ecosystem lists cloud and model integrations including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face, and Ollama. |
| Intended users | The documentation describes Distributed as suited to enterprise users running large-scale vector search systems in production. | The company describes Weaviate as infrastructure for developers and says its deployments serve startups, scale-ups, and enterprises. |
| Product | Milvus is an open-source vector database built for GenAI applications. | Weaviate is an open-source AI vector database for storing, indexing, and searching high-dimensional vectors, used as a foundation for search, RAG, and agents. |
| Search | Milvus supports approximate nearest neighbor, filtering, range, hybrid, and full-text search, plus reranking, fetch, and query operations. | The database supports hybrid search that combines vector and BM25 keyword search, along with semantic and keyword search. |
| Security | Milvus documents user authentication, TLS encryption for gRPC and REST traffic, and role-based access control. | The security page states that Weaviate Cloud encrypts data in transit and at rest, supports role-based access controls, and provides automated daily backups. |
| Support | The Milvus site lists community channels including Slack, Discord, GitHub, and Milvus Office Hours. | Free includes Basic Support; Flex lists Standard Support with next-business-day Sev 1 response, while Premium lists enterprise support as fast as 1-hour Sev 1. |
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.
Weaviate
Weaviate is an open-source AI vector database for storing, indexing and searching high-dimensional vectors, used as a foundation for search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agents. Its hybrid search combines vector retrieval with BM25 keyword search, alongside semantic and keyword search. Other listed capabilities include advanced filtering, vectorizer modules, configurable backups, native multi-tenancy, vector-index compression and tenant isolation. It can run as a hosted service or as a self-managed instance locally or with a cloud provider, with Docker and Kubernetes deployment options. Its integrations include AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face and Ollama. Weaviate Cloud encrypts data in transit and at rest, supports role-based access controls and provides automated daily backups. The Free plan includes up to 100,000 objects, one collection and three tenants, but no backups or high-availability replication. Flex costs $45 a month; Premium costs $400 a month. Windows use is possible through containers such as Docker or WSL, but native Windows support is not offered. SDKs are listed for Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, Java and C#.