# Faiss vs txtai

| Attribute | Faiss | txtai |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 57 (35% (low)) | 61.2 (56% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 66 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 5,592 | 14 |
| adoption.github_stars | 41,146 | 13,018 |
| 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":"txtai is an open-source Python framework for building semantic search applications, LLM-powered agents, retrieval augmented generation systems, and language model workflows with support for multiple vector backends and integration with various LLMs. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://neuml.github.io/txtai","question":"What is txtai?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"txtai is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://neuml.github.io/txtai","question":"Is txtai free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"txtai supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://neuml.github.io/txtai","question":"What platforms does txtai support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. txtai can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://neuml.github.io/txtai","question":"Can txtai be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 11 integrations for txtai, including llama.cpp, LiteLLM, Hugging Face, OpenAI, Claude, AWS Bedrock, smolagents and OpenCode, plus 3 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://neuml.github.io/txtai","question":"What does txtai integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. txtai 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/neuml/txtai","question":"Is txtai open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":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. | txtai is an open-source Python framework for building semantic search applications, LLM-powered agents, retrieval augmented generation systems, and language model workflows with support for multiple vector backends and integration with various LLMs. |
| 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"}` | `{"ann_index":"HNSW, IVF, IVFSparse, milvus-lite, turbovec, zvec","deployment":"embedded","consistency":"tunable","open_source":true,"quantization":"scalar","storage_tier":"disk_backed","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"multimodal_rag":true,"distance_metrics":"cosine","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","hybrid_retrieval":true,"metadata_filtering":"pre_filter","citation_attribution":true,"llm_provider_agnostic":true,"reranking_integration":true,"managed_ingestion_pipeline":true,"embedding_provider_agnostic":true,"multi_hop_agentic_retrieval":true}` |
| integrations.count | - | 5 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"llama.cpp"},{"name":"LiteLLM"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Claude"},{"name":"AWS Bedrock"},{"name":"smolagents"},{"name":"OpenCode"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"Milvus"},{"name":"LiteRT"},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","native":true,"category":"api","direction":"bidirectional"}]` |
| language.primary | C++ | Python |
| license.spdx | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| platform.support | `{"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":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://neuml.github.io/txtai","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T12:43:59.946Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | - | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 83 | 27 |
| 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/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.14.0","date":"2026-10-06T12:49:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.14.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.13.0","date":"2026-08-27T13:16:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.13.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.12.0","date":"2026-07-30T19:43:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.12.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.11.0","date":"2026-07-01T15:07:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.10.0","date":"2026-06-04T10:22:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.9.0","date":"2026-05-12T15:21:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.8.0","date":"2026-04-29T15:29:38Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.7.0","date":"2026-03-20T17:10:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.6.0","date":"2026-02-25T17:56:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2026-02-12T16:44:38Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.4.1","date":"2026-01-23T17:03:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2026-01-21T15:30:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.3.0","date":"2025-12-22T23:35:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.2.0","date":"2025-11-21T15:09:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.1.0","date":"2025-11-04T13:23:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.0.1","date":"2025-09-15T13:25:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v9.0.0","date":"2025-08-28T19:17:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v8.6.0","date":"2025-06-10T14:25:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v8.5.0","date":"2025-04-14T20:09:38Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/neuml/txtai/releases/tag/v8.4.0","date":"2025-03-11T14:24:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.4.0"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.scorecard | 6.2 | 5.4 |
| 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=txtai&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

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

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:20:07.655Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*