# Milvus vs Weaviate

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Weaviate

| Attribute | Milvus | Weaviate |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 68.2 (25% (low)) | 68.7 (43% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.github_stars | 45,440 | 16,677 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.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. |
| features.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"}` |
| language.primary | Go | Go |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"NL","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"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"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 5 | 1 |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.95 |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |

## Capabilities (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 |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-08-07T00:01:43.636Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*