Comparison

Milvus vs Weaviate

On the evidence we track, Weaviate leads this comparison with a composite score of 69/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Milvus full profile →Weaviate full profile →

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Attribute comparison across 2 tools
Attribute	Milvus	WeaviateLeader
Vioscale score	68 / 100low · 25%	69 / 100low · 43%
Commits last 30dactivity.commits_last_30d	100	100
Github starsadoption.github_stars	45,440	16,677
Optionsdeployment.options	{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}	{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}
Longdescription.long	Milvus is an open-source vector database built for GenAI applications, enabling high-speed similarity search and scaling to tens of billions of vectors with minimal performance loss.	Open-source vector database for storing and searching high-dimensional vectors, with built-in embeddings, RAG, and AI agent query capabilities.
Capabilitiesfeatures.capabilities	{"deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"disk_backed","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","product_class":"dedicated_dbms","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed"}	{"deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":true,"hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed"}
Primarylanguage.primary	Go	Go
Spdxlicense.spdx	Apache-2.0	BSD-3-Clause
Availabilitymarket.availability	-	{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}
Supportplatform.support	{"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}	{"cli":true,"web":true}
Pricingpricing	{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open-source with optional managed Zilliz Cloud (serverless and dedicated cluster; free trial available)","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://milvus.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-05T13:26:39.808Z"}	{"type":"hybrid","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://weaviate.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-05T13:28:29.566Z"}
Free tierpricing.free_tier	Yes	Yes
Modelpricing.model	open_source	freemium
Price levelpricing.price_level	free	low
Transparentpricing.transparent	Yes	No
Cadence daysrelease.cadence_days	5	1
Sla pctreliability.sla_pct	-	99.95
Status pagereliability.status_page	-	Yes
Disclosure policysecurity.disclosure_policy	-	Yes
Gdprsecurity.gdpr	-	Yes
Hipaasecurity.hipaa	-	Yes
Soc2security.soc2	-	Yes

Capabilities

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

Capability comparison for Vector Databases
Capability	Milvus	Weaviate
Deployment
Deployment	Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Serverless / consumption pricing	✓	✓
Index
ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat)	-	-
Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean)	-	-
Query
Metadata filtering	-	-
Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion)	✓	✓
Built-in BM25 / lexical	-	-
Storage
Quantization	-	-
On-disk vs in-memory	Disk-backed	-
Scale
Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants)	-	✓
Horizontal scale	Sharded / distributed	Sharded / distributed
Consistency
Consistency	-	-
Licensing
Licence class	Permissive OSS	Permissive OSS
Classification
Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent	Dedicated DBMS	Dedicated DBMS

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