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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.

Rank: #4License: Apache 2.0Cost: low

Deployment

Self-Hosted, Managed Cloud

Cost

Free (self-hosted), infra cost only

Index Types

IVF, HNSW, DiskANN

Deployment

Infrastructure Options

Deployment Types

  • Self-Hosted
  • Managed Cloud

Cloud Providers

  • Any

Strengths

What Milvus Does Well

  • Widest variety of index types (IVF, HNSW, DiskANN, SCANN)
  • Highly configurable for performance optimization
  • Excellent for very large-scale deployments (trillions of vectors)
  • Open-source with no licensing costs
  • Strong performance when properly tuned
  • Multiple similarity metrics supported
  • Can deploy anywhere (any cloud or on-premise)
  • Active CNCF project with strong backing
  • GPU acceleration support

Weaknesses

Potential Drawbacks

  • Steeper learning curve and more complex setup
  • Requires more tuning and expertise to optimize
  • API less intuitive than newer alternatives
  • Documentation can be overwhelming for beginners
  • Self-hosted requires significant infrastructure knowledge
  • Higher operational overhead

Use Cases

When to Choose Milvus

Ideal For

  • Large-scale deployments with billions/trillions of vectors
  • Teams with infrastructure expertise wanting control
  • Projects requiring specific index optimization
  • Cost-sensitive applications at scale
  • Research and experimentation with different algorithms
  • GPU-accelerated workloads

Not Ideal For

  • Quick prototypes or MVPs
  • Small teams without infrastructure experience
  • Projects needing simple plug-and-play solutions
  • Teams wanting fully managed services

Compare Databases

See how it stacks up

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