# Faiss vs LanceDB

| Attribute | Faiss | LanceDB |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 57 (35% (low)) | 58.5 (53% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 66 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 5,592 | 453 |
| adoption.github_stars | 41,146 | 11,663 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 1,423,043 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://faiss.ai","question":"What is Faiss?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Faiss is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the MIT licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://faiss.ai","question":"Is Faiss free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Faiss supports Windows, macOS and Linux. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://faiss.ai","question":"What platforms does Faiss support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Faiss can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://faiss.ai","question":"Can Faiss be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Faiss is published under the MIT licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss","question":"Is Faiss open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"A purpose-built lakehouse designed for AI applications that unifies storage, indexing, and retrieval of multimodal data (text, images, videos, and more) at petabyte scale. Enables fast vector search, metadata filtering, and feature engineering workflows for machine learning workloads without data synchronization overhead. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://lancedb.com","question":"What is LanceDB?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"LanceDB supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://lancedb.com","question":"What platforms does LanceDB support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. LanceDB can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://lancedb.com","question":"Can LanceDB be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 15 integrations for LanceDB, including LangChain, LlamaIndex, DuckDB, Apache Arrow, Pandas, Polars, CrewAI and Hugging Face, plus 7 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://lancedb.com","question":"What does LanceDB integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR for LanceDB. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as LanceDB not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://lancedb.com","question":"What security certifications does LanceDB have?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. LanceDB is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb","question":"Is LanceDB open source?","confidence":0.99}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. | A specialized lakehouse platform designed to store and query text, images, and vector data together, enabling high-performance vector search for real-time and historical multimodal AI workloads. |
| features.capabilities | `{"ann_index":"HNSW, IVF, PQ, multi-index, NSG","deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":false,"quantization":"product","storage_tier":"disk_backed","licence_class":"permissive_oss","product_class":"extension","distance_metrics":"Euclidean (L2), inner product, L1, Linf","horizontal_scale":"single_node"}` | `{"deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"disk_backed","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"post_filter"}` |
| integrations.count | - | 15 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"LangChain"},{"name":"LlamaIndex"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"Apache Arrow"},{"name":"Pandas"},{"name":"Polars"},{"name":"CrewAI"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"Apache Fluss"},{"name":"Ray"},{"name":"Volcano Engine"},{"name":"Voxel51"},{"name":"Continue"},{"name":"OpenClaw"},{"name":"LeRobot"},{"name":"Fluss","category":"streaming storage"},{"name":"Apache Flink","category":"data processing"},{"name":"MemGPT","category":"ai"},{"name":"OpenSearch","category":"search"},{"name":"Flight SQL","category":"sql"}]` |
| language.primary | C++ | Rust |
| license.spdx | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://faiss.ai","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:46:34.341Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://lancedb.com","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T21:10:06.700Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| release.cadence_days | 83 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.15.1","date":"2026-09-16T19:24:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.15.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.15.0","date":"2026-08-03T17:10:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.15.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.3","date":"2026-06-13T04:03:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.2","date":"2026-05-22T20:05:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.1","date":"2026-03-06T17:49:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.0","date":"2026-03-03T03:19:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.2","date":"2025-12-19T23:41:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.1","date":"2025-12-03T00:02:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.0","date":"2025-11-12T17:18:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.12.0","date":"2025-08-12T16:46:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.12.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.11.0","date":"2025-04-25T14:13:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.10.0","date":"2025-01-31T23:29:10Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.9.0","date":"2024-10-04T21:33:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.8.0","date":"2024-03-01T01:04:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.4","date":"2023-04-20T13:45:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.3","date":"2022-11-30T15:24:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.2","date":"2022-01-10T12:19:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.1","date":"2021-05-28T09:08:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.0","date":"2021-02-13T14:11:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.6.5","date":"2020-12-21T05:24:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.6.5"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.6","date":"2026-10-12T11:38:16Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.5","date":"2026-10-12T06:04:24Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.4","date":"2026-10-11T06:35:36Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.3","date":"2026-10-09T21:14:01Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.2","date":"2026-10-09T18:21:48Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.1","date":"2026-10-09T00:50:00Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.41.0-beta.0","date":"2026-10-07T14:47:59Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-beta.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0","date":"2026-10-07T09:17:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.40.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.13","date":"2026-10-06T04:37:12Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.12","date":"2026-09-30T13:32:37Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.11","date":"2026-09-24T10:05:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.10","date":"2026-09-24T07:50:40Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.9","date":"2026-09-23T23:41:17Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.8","date":"2026-09-23T17:06:19Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.7","date":"2026-09-23T07:29:15Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.6","date":"2026-09-22T18:00:48Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.5","date":"2026-09-21T18:53:28Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.4","date":"2026-09-20T08:29:17Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.3","date":"2026-09-17T20:06:51Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.40.0-beta.2","date":"2026-09-17T12:52:48Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-beta.2"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 6.2 | - |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=faiss-cpu&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=lancedb&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

| Capability | Faiss | LanceDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Serverless / consumption pricing | ✗ | ✓ |
| **Index** |  |  |
| ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat) | HNSW, IVF, PQ, multi-index, NSG | - |
| Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean) | Euclidean (L2), inner product, L1, Linf | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Metadata filtering | - | Post-filter |
| Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion) | - | ✓ |
| Built-in BM25 / lexical | - | ✓ |
| **Storage** |  |  |
| Quantization | Product | - |
| On-disk vs in-memory | Disk-backed | Disk-backed |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants) | - | ✓ |
| Horizontal scale | Single-node | Sharded / distributed |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Extension | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:01:54.093Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*