# Faiss vs LanceDB

| Attribute | Faiss | LanceDB |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 62 (36% (low)) | 59.2 (43% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 47 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 5,592 | 453 |
| adoption.github_stars | 40,809 | 11,284 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 1,350,674 |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. | A purpose-built lakehouse designed for AI applications that unifies storage, indexing, and retrieval of multimodal data (text, images, videos, and more) at petabyte scale. Enables fast vector search, metadata filtering, and feature engineering workflows for machine learning workloads without data synchronization overhead. |
| features.capabilities | `{"ann_index":"HNSW, IVF, PQ, multi-index, NSG","deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":false,"quantization":"product","storage_tier":"disk_backed","licence_class":"permissive_oss","product_class":"extension","distance_metrics":"Euclidean (L2), inner product, L1, Linf","horizontal_scale":"single_node"}` | `{"deployment":"self_hosted","storage_tier":"disk_backed","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"post_filter"}` |
| integrations.count | - | 15 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"LangChain"},{"name":"LlamaIndex"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"Apache Arrow"},{"name":"Pandas"},{"name":"Polars"},{"name":"CrewAI"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"Apache Fluss"},{"name":"Ray"},{"name":"Volcano Engine"},{"name":"Voxel51"},{"name":"Continue"},{"name":"OpenClaw"},{"name":"LeRobot"}]` |
| language.primary | C++ | Rust |
| license.spdx | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://faiss.ai","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:46:34.341Z"}` | - |
| pricing.model | commercial | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | - |
| release.cadence_days | 83 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.15.0","date":"2026-08-03T17:10:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.15.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.3","date":"2026-06-13T04:03:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.2","date":"2026-05-22T20:05:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.1","date":"2026-03-06T17:49:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.14.0","date":"2026-03-03T03:19:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.14.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.2","date":"2025-12-19T23:41:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.1","date":"2025-12-03T00:02:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.13.0","date":"2025-11-12T17:18:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.13.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.12.0","date":"2025-08-12T16:46:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.12.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.11.0","date":"2025-04-25T14:13:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.11.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.10.0","date":"2025-01-31T23:29:10Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.9.0","date":"2024-10-04T21:33:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.8.0","date":"2024-03-01T01:04:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.4","date":"2023-04-20T13:45:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.3","date":"2022-11-30T15:24:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.2","date":"2022-01-10T12:19:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.1","date":"2021-05-28T09:08:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.7.0","date":"2021-02-13T14:11:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.6.5","date":"2020-12-21T05:24:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.6.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/releases/tag/v1.6.4","date":"2020-10-22T13:28:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.6.4"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.9","date":"2026-08-25T10:32:32Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.8","date":"2026-08-25T06:26:50Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.10","date":"2026-08-25T10:37:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.7","date":"2026-08-24T21:09:33Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.6","date":"2026-08-23T17:33:36Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.5","date":"2026-08-23T08:08:08Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.4","date":"2026-08-22T16:39:04Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.3","date":"2026-08-21T10:26:13Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.2","date":"2026-08-19T01:59:45Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.1","date":"2026-08-17T16:57:15Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.38.0-beta.0","date":"2026-08-14T01:10:07Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-beta.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.37.1","date":"2026-08-10T07:55:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.37.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.37.1-beta.2","date":"2026-08-10T06:31:02Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.37.1-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.37.1-beta.1","date":"2026-08-07T21:16:26Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.37.1-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.37.1-beta.0","date":"2026-07-29T07:12:53Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.37.1-beta.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.33.0","date":"2026-07-28T21:32:52Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.33.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/python-v0.36.0","date":"2026-07-28T21:33:04Z","type":"stable","version":"python-v0.36.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.33.0-beta.0","date":"2026-07-24T19:34:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.33.0-beta.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/v0.32.0-beta.3","date":"2026-07-24T22:04:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.32.0-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/releases/tag/python-v0.36.0-beta.0","date":"2026-07-24T19:34:22Z","type":"stable","version":"python-v0.36.0-beta.0"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 6.1 | - |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=faiss-cpu&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=lancedb&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

| Capability | Faiss | LanceDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Serverless / consumption pricing | ✗ | - |
| **Index** |  |  |
| ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat) | HNSW, IVF, PQ, multi-index, NSG | - |
| Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean) | Euclidean (L2), inner product, L1, Linf | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Metadata filtering | - | Post-filter |
| Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion) | - | ✓ |
| Built-in BM25 / lexical | - | ✓ |
| **Storage** |  |  |
| Quantization | Product | - |
| On-disk vs in-memory | Disk-backed | Disk-backed |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants) | - | ✓ |
| Horizontal scale | Single-node | Sharded / distributed |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Extension | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:35:53.995Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*