Comparison

Marqo vs Milvus

On the evidence we track, Milvus leads this comparison with a composite score of 57/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Marqo40
★Milvus57
Score
vioscaleAI score
Marqo40 / 100low · 30%
Milvus57 / 100medium · 57%
Pricing
Free tier
Marqo–
Milvus✓
Model
Marqoquote
Price level
Marqounknown
Milvusfree
Transparent
Marqo✗
Milvus✗
Integrations
Count
Marqo3
Milvus2
Reliability
Status page
Marqo✓
Milvus–
Adoption
Dependent repos
Marqo–
Milvus7
Github stars
Marqo–
Milvus46,375
Activity
Commits last 30d
Marqo–
Milvus100
Release
Cadence days
Marqo–
Milvus7
History
Marqo–
Milvus20 items
License
Spdx
Marqo–
Language
Primary
Marqo–
MilvusGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Marqo6 items
Milvus6 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for vector databases. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Deployment
Deployment
MarqoManaged
MilvusSelf-hosted
Serverless / consumption pricing
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Index
ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat)
Marqo-
MilvusHNSW, IVF, FLAT, SCANN, DiskANN, GPU_CAGRA
Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean)
Marqo-
Milvuscosine, Euclidean, dot product
Query
Metadata filtering
Marqo-
MilvusPre-filter
Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion)
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Built-in BM25 / lexical
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Storage
Quantization
Marqo-
MilvusProduct
On-disk vs in-memory
Marqo-
MilvusDisk-backed
Scale
Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants)
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Horizontal scale
MarqoSharded / distributed
MilvusSharded / distributed
Consistency
Consistency
Marqo-
MilvusEventual
Licensing
Licence class
MarqoProprietary
MilvusPermissive OSS
Classification
Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent
MarqoDedicated DBMS
MilvusDedicated DBMS

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Marqo

An ecommerce search platform using semantic understanding and personalization to help online retailers deliver relevant product results and recommendations based on shopper behavior and intent.

Independently observed

Milvus

Leader

A high-performance, distributed vector database that enables fast similarity search across billions of high-dimensional vectors, supporting real-time updates, flexible metadata filtering, and hybrid search capabilities for AI and machine learning applications.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Marqo

Quote-based
as of verify ↗

Milvus

Leader
Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Linux
Marqo✗
Milvus✓
CLI
Marqo✗
Milvus✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Marqo✓
Milvus✓
Self-hosted
Marqo✗
Milvus✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Marqo

3 total
  • Shopify
  • Adobe Commerce
  • Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Independently observed

Milvus

Leader
8 total
  • OpenAI
  • Sentence Transformers
  • BGE-M3
  • SPLADE
  • Jina AI
  • BM25
  • PyMilvus
  • Jina
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Marqo or Milvus: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.