Turbopuffer vs Weaviate

Compare deployment options, cost efficiency, and features to choose the right vector database for your application.

Database Comparison

Turbopuffer takes the lead.

Both Turbopuffer and Weaviate 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 offers more deployment options
  • Turbopuffer is more cost-effective
  • Weaviate has more permissive licensing
  • Weaviate has 1 more strengths

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
View full details

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.

Deployment: Self-Hosted, Managed Cloud
Cost: Free (self-host), cloud starts ~$25/mo
License: BSD
View full details

Feature Comparison

Infrastructure & Technical Details

FeatureTurbopufferWeaviate
DeploymentBYOC, Managed CloudSelf-Hosted, Managed Cloud
CostMinimum commitment $64/monthFree (self-host), cloud starts ~$25/mo
LicenseProprietaryBSD
Index TypesSPFreshHNSW, Hybrid dense+sparse
Cloud ProvidersAWS, GCP, AzureAWS, GCP
Regional Flexibilityhighlow
Strengths Count78
Weaknesses Count76