Comparison

Milvus vs Weaviate

On the evidence we track, Weaviate leads this comparison with a composite score of 63/100. 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.
Milvus57
★Weaviate63
Score
vioscaleAI score
Milvus57 / 100medium · 57%
Weaviate63 / 100medium · 73%
Pricing
Free tier
Milvus✓
Weaviate✓
Model
Weaviatefreemium
Price level
Milvusfree
Weaviatelow
Transparent
Milvus✗
Weaviate✗
Integrations
Count
Milvus2
Weaviate25
Reliability
Sla pct
Milvus–
Weaviate99.95
Status page
Milvus–
Weaviate✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Milvus7
Weaviate15
Github stars
Milvus46,375
Weaviate16,862
Activity
Commits last 30d
Milvus100
Weaviate100
Release
Cadence days
Milvus7
Weaviate1
History
Milvus20 items
Weaviate20 items
License
Spdx
Language
Primary
MilvusGo
WeaviateGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Milvus6 items
Weaviate7 items

Capabilities

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

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

Weaviate

Leader

A vector database that enables semantic search by storing both objects and vectors, with built-in support for combining vector similarity search with traditional keyword search, retrieval-augmented generation, and reranking capabilities.

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 ↗

Weaviate

Leader
HybridFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

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

Weaviate

Leader

Not documented yet.

Still deciding?

Milvus or Weaviate: 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.