vioscaleAI
Comparison

Milvus vs Zilliz Cloud

On the evidence we track, Zilliz Cloud leads this comparison with a composite score of 80/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Milvus full profile →Zilliz Cloud full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLAll open, no key required.
Milvus58
★Zilliz Cloud80
Score
vioscaleAI score
Milvus58 / 100medium · 57%
Zilliz Cloud80 / 100medium · 74%
Pricing
Free tier
Milvus✓
Zilliz Cloud✓
Model
Milvusfree
Zilliz Cloudfreemium
Price level
Milvusfree
Zilliz Cloudhigh
Starting price
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud$197
Transparent
Milvus✗
Zilliz Cloud✓
Integrations
Count
Milvus7
Zilliz Cloud1,000
Security
Certifications
Milvus–
Zilliz CloudSOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001
Gdpr
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud✓
Hipaa
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud✓
Iso27001
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud✓
Scorecard
Milvus4.4
Zilliz Cloud–
Soc2
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud✓
Trust center
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloudhttps://zilliz.com/trust-center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud99.95
Status page
Milvus–
Zilliz Cloud✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Milvus7
Zilliz Cloud–
Github stars
Milvus46,047
Zilliz Cloud–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Milvus100
Zilliz Cloud–
Release
Cadence days
Milvus10
Zilliz Cloud–
History
Milvus20 items
Zilliz Cloud–
License
Spdx
MilvusApache-2.0
Zilliz Cloud–
Language
Primary
MilvusGo
Zilliz Cloud–
Market
Availability
Milvus–
Zilliz CloudAvailable worldwide
Content
Faq
Milvus6 items
Zilliz Cloud6 items

Capabilities

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

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

Zilliz Cloud

Leader

Zilliz Cloud is a managed cloud service built on the open-source Milvus vector database. It handles storage, indexing, and similarity search at scale for unstructured data, supporting vector search, full-text search, and hybrid retrieval for AI and machine learning workloads.

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

FreeFree tier

Open-source and available for free. Managed hosting available through Zilliz Cloud.

as of verify ↗

Zilliz Cloud

Leader
from $197/moHybridFree tier30-day trial

Free tier with 5 GB storage. Serverless pricing from $0/month pay-per-query. Dedicated clusters from $197/month. Annual commitments available.

  • FreeFree
    • Community support via Slack
    • Vector search
    • Filtered search
    • Range search
  • ServerlessPay-per-query pricing, system-managed auto-scaling
    • Fully managed vector databases
    • Backup and restore
    • Basic monitoring
    • Built-in encryption for data in transit and at rest
    • Vector search
    • +2 more
  • DedicatedFrom $197/month base, plus $0.126/GB storage, dedicated infrastructure
    • 99.95% uptime SLA
    • SSO (SAML 2.0)
    • Granular RBAC
    • Multi-replica and elastic scaling
    • Global cluster with disaster recovery
    • +9 more
  • BYOCContact sales
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

Integrations

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

In common (2)
  • Jina AI
  • PyMilvus

Milvus

8 total - 6 not shared
  • OpenAI
  • Sentence Transformers
  • BGE-M3
  • SPLADE
  • BM25
  • Jina
Independently observed

Zilliz Cloud

Leader
32 total - 30 not shared
  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Azure
  • LangChain
  • Fivetran
  • Google Ads
  • Google Analytics 4
  • Google Search Console
  • Google Sheets
  • Hubspot
  • LinkedIn Ad Analytics
  • Marketo
  • Microsoft Advertising
  • NetSuite SuiteAnalytics
  • Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications
  • Apache SeaTunnel
  • PostgreSQL/Pgvector
  • Claude
  • Prometheus
  • HoneyHive
  • Cohere
  • Haystack
  • FiftyOne
  • DSPy
  • +6 more
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Milvus or Zilliz Cloud: 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.