LanceDB vs Weaviate
Compare deployment options, cost efficiency, and features to choose the right vector database for your application.
Database Comparison
LanceDB takes the lead.
Both LanceDB and Weaviate are powerful vector databases designed for efficient similarity search and storage. However, their deployment options and features differ in important ways.
Why LanceDB:
- LanceDB ranks higher overall
- LanceDB offers more deployment options
- LanceDB is more cost-effective
- LanceDB has more permissive licensing
- LanceDB has 5 more strengths
LanceDB
LanceDB is an open-source, AI-native multimodal lakehouse designed for billion-scale vector search. Built on the Lance columnar format, it combines embedded simplicity with cloud-scale performance. LanceDB's disk-based architecture with compute-storage separation enables up to 100x cost savings compared to memory-based solutions while supporting multimodal data (text, images, video, audio).
Weaviate
Weaviate is a cloud and self-hosted vector database offering hybrid dense+sparse search, strong metadata filtering, and a modular storage layer. It is designed for enterprise and production RAG workloads that require flexibility and scalable cloud hosting.
Feature Comparison
Infrastructure & Technical Details
| Feature | LanceDB | Weaviate |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Embedded/Local, Self-Hosted, Managed Cloud (LanceDB Cloud) | Self-Hosted, Managed Cloud |
| Cost | OSS: Free; Cloud: usage-based with $100 free credits; Enterprise: custom pricing | Free (self-host), cloud starts ~$25/mo |
| License | Apache 2.0 | BSD |
| Index Types | IVF-PQ, IVF-HNSW-PQ, BTree | HNSW, Hybrid dense+sparse |
| Cloud Providers | AWS, Azure, GCP, Any (self-hosted) | AWS, GCP |
| Regional Flexibility | high | low |
| Strengths | 13 | 8 |
| Weaknesses | 9 | 6 |