# LanceDB vs Milvus

| Attribute | LanceDB | Milvus |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 59.2 (43% (low)) | 58.7 (52% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 453 | 7 |
| adoption.github_stars | 11,284 | 45,802 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 1,350,674 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | A distributed database system for storing and searching high-dimensional vectors at scale. Supports multiple deployment models from local notebooks to cloud-managed services, with capabilities for hybrid search combining dense and sparse embeddings. |
| features.capabilities | `{"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"}` | `{"serverless":true,"consistency":"eventual","quantization":"product","storage_tier":"disk_backed","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"distance_metrics":"cosine, Euclidean, dot product","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"pre_filter"}` |
| integrations.count | 15 | 7 |
| 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"}]` | `[{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Sentence Transformers"},{"name":"BGE-M3"},{"name":"SPLADE"},{"name":"Jina AI"},{"name":"BM25"},{"name":"PyMilvus"}]` |
| language.primary | Rust | Go |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | - | `{"type":"hybrid","summary":"Open-source free; managed cloud service available","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://milvus.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T13:40:14.941Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | - | low |
| pricing.transparent | - | no |
| release.cadence_days | - | 6 |
| release.history | `[{"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"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.22","date":"2026-08-04T01:55:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.22"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v3.0.0","date":"2026-07-29T14:27:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.21","date":"2026-07-24T06:50:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.21"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/client/v3.0.0-beta","date":"2026-07-19T14:35:01Z","type":"prerelease","version":"client/v3.0.0-beta"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.20","date":"2026-07-14T06:44:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.20"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.19","date":"2026-06-26T11:47:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.18","date":"2026-06-05T04:03:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.18"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/client/v2.6.5","date":"2026-05-26T02:44:44Z","type":"stable","version":"client/v2.6.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.17","date":"2026-05-22T03:15:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.16","date":"2026-05-14T04:15:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v3.0-beta","date":"2026-05-09T04:49:46Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v3.0-beta"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/client/v2.6.4","date":"2026-05-08T02:40:41Z","type":"stable","version":"client/v2.6.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.15","date":"2026-04-17T02:29:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.14","date":"2026-04-07T02:08:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/client/v2.6.3","date":"2026-03-24T06:33:20Z","type":"stable","version":"client/v2.6.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.13","date":"2026-03-23T07:58:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.12","date":"2026-03-13T07:24:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.11","date":"2026-02-12T01:57:24Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.5.27","date":"2026-02-11T02:40:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.5.27"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.10","date":"2026-02-05T01:34:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.10"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 4.4 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=lancedb&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fmilvus-io%2Fmilvus%2Fpkg&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

| Capability | LanceDB | Milvus |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | - |
| Serverless / consumption pricing | - | ✓ |
| **Index** |  |  |
| ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat) | - | - |
| Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean) | - | cosine, Euclidean, dot product |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Metadata filtering | Post-filter | Pre-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 | Sharded / distributed | Sharded / distributed |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | Eventual |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Permissive OSS |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Dedicated DBMS | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T14:59:18.667Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*