Turbopuffer vs Milvus

Compare deployment options, cost efficiency, and features to choose the right vector database for your application. If you want to compare these models on your data, try Agentset.

Database Comparison

Turbopuffer takes the lead.

Both Turbopuffer and Milvus are powerful vector databases designed for efficient similarity search and storage. However, their deployment options and features differ in important ways.

Why Turbopuffer:

  • Turbopuffer ranks higher overall
  • Turbopuffer is more cost-effective
  • Milvus has more permissive licensing
  • Milvus has 2 more strengths

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Turbopuffer

Turbopuffer is a fully managed cloud vector database built around a centroid-optimized SPFresh index. It is designed for extremely low-cost, large-scale storage, leveraging object storage engines like S3, GCS, or Azure Blob.

Deployment: BYOC, Managed Cloud
Cost: Minimum commitment $64/month
License: Proprietary
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Milvus

Milvus is a flexible, open-source vector database built for local and hybrid cloud deployment. With support for IVF, HNSW, and DiskANN, it provides the widest indexing variety for tuning performance on large-scale workloads. Milvus is ideal when you want control, configurability, and low infrastructure cost.

Deployment: Self-Hosted, Managed Cloud
Cost: Free (self-hosted), infra cost only
License: Apache 2.0
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Build RAG in Minutes, Not Months

Agentset gives you a complete RAG API with fully managed vector storage and retrieval. Upload your data, call the API, and get accurate results from day one.

import { Agentset } from "agentset";

const agentset = new Agentset();
const ns = agentset.namespace("ns_1234");

const results = await ns.search(
  "What is multi-head attention?"
);

for (const result of results) {
  console.log(result.text);
}

Feature Comparison

Infrastructure & Technical Details

FeatureTurbopufferMilvus
DeploymentBYOC, Managed CloudSelf-Hosted, Managed Cloud
CostMinimum commitment $64/monthFree (self-hosted), infra cost only
LicenseProprietaryApache 2.0
Index TypesSPFreshIVF, HNSW, DiskANN
Cloud ProvidersAWS, GCP, AzureAny
Regional Flexibilityhighhigh
Strengths79
Weaknesses76