vioscaleAI
Comparison

Milvus vs Pinecone

On the evidence we track, Pinecone leads this comparison with a composite score of 75/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Milvus full profile →Pinecone full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Milvus57
★Pinecone75
Score
vioscaleAI score
Milvus57 / 100medium · 57%
Pinecone75 / 100medium · 74%
Pricing
Free tier
Milvus✓
Pinecone✓
Model
Milvusopen_source
Pineconefreemium
Price level
Milvusfree
Pineconemid
Starting price
Milvus–
Pinecone$20
Transparent
Milvus✗
Pinecone✓
Integrations
Count
Milvus2
Pinecone8
Security
Certifications
Gdpr
Milvus–
Pinecone✓
Hipaa
Milvus–
Pinecone✓
Iso27001
Milvus–
Pinecone✓
Scorecard
Milvus4.4
Pinecone–
Soc2
Milvus–
Pinecone✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Milvus–
Pinecone99.95
Status page
Milvus–
Pinecone✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Milvus7
Pinecone–
Github stars
Milvus46,375
Pinecone–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Milvus100
Pinecone–
Release
Cadence days
Milvus7
Pinecone–
History
Milvus20 items
Pinecone–
License
Spdx
MilvusApache-2.0
Pinecone–
Language
Primary
MilvusGo
Pinecone–
Market
Availability
Milvus–
PineconeAvailable worldwide
Content
Faq
Milvus6 items
Pinecone6 items

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

Milvus

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

Pinecone

Leader

A cloud-hosted vector database designed for AI applications, enabling fast semantic search and retrieval without performance degradation at scale. Supports dense, sparse, and full-text search with automatic indexing and built-in compliance for production use.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Milvus

Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Pinecone

Leader
from $20/moHybridFree tier21-day trial

Free tier available. Paid plans from $20/month; production plans $50–$500/month minimum plus usage-based charges.

  • StarterFree
    • Dense, Sparse, and Full-Text Indexes
    • Console Metrics
    • Community Support via Discord
    • USA region only
  • Builder$20/month flat
    • Everything in Starter
    • Increased usage limits
    • Multiple projects and users
    • Any cloud and region
    • Prometheus and Datadog monitoring
    • +1 more
  • Standard$50/month minimum + usage-based. 3-week free trial with $300 credits.
    • Everything in Builder
    • Unlimited storage
    • Pay-as-you-go Database On-Demand, Inference, and Assistant usage
    • Dedicated Read Nodes
    • Import from object storage
    • +4 more
  • Enterprise$500/month minimum + usage-based
    • Everything in Standard
    • 99.95% Uptime SLA
    • Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)
    • Private Endpoints
    • Customer Managed Encryption Keys
    • +5 more
  • Bring Your Own CloudContact sales
    • Pinecone runs in customer's cloud account and VPC
    • Zero-access operations – no SSH, VPN, or inbound access
    • Outbound-only operations with auditable trail
    • AWS PrivateLink, GCP Private Service Connect, or Azure Private Link
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

Integrations

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

Milvus

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

Pinecone

Leader
20 total
  • Azure OpenAI
  • GitHub CoPilot
  • Azure Marketplace
  • Microsoft Marketplace
  • AWS
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Drive
  • Slack
  • Vercel
  • Claude
  • Datadog
  • Prometheus
  • GCP
  • Azure
  • Cursor
  • Vercel AI SDK
  • Confluent
  • Zapier
  • Discord
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Milvus or Pinecone: 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.