# Milvus vs Zilliz Cloud

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Zilliz Cloud

| Attribute | Milvus | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 68.2 (25% (low)) | 84 (53% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 45,440 | - |
| 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. | Fully managed Vector Lakebase services designed for high reliability, performance, and cost efficiency at scale. Purpose-built for real-time serving, iterative discovery, and batch analytics at billion-scale. |
| 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":"managed","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"tiered","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"proprietary","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed"}` |
| language.primary | Go | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| 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","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Free","features":["Shared managed environment","Basic API access"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Starting point for learning and personal projects","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"vCUs":"2.5M per month","storage":"5 GB","collections":"5"}},{"free":false,"name":"Standard","summary":"From $0/mo (Serverless) or $126/GB/mo (Dedicated)","features":["Fully managed vector databases with core APIs","Backup and restore","Basic monitoring","Encryption in transit and at rest"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD","description":"Serverless starting price"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":126,"currency":"USD","description":"Dedicated pricing"}],"description":"Fully managed essentials for non-critical workloads. Best for prototypes and testing environments","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"From $197/mo (Dedicated)","features":["99.95% uptime SLA","Audit logs","SSO (SAML 2.0)","Granular RBAC","Multi-replica and elastic scaling","Private endpoint and VPC peering","On-demand Enterprise support"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":197,"period":"month","currency":"USD","description":"Dedicated minimum"}],"description":"Enterprise-grade reliability and controls. Best for production applications","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Business Critical","summary":"Custom pricing","features":["Global cluster with high-level availability and disaster recovery","CMEK and full-path in-transit encryption (edge TLS + internal)","HIPAA-eligible with enhanced data privacy","Priority support and rapid incident response"],"description":"Regulated-ready with maximum resilience. Best for healthcare, finance, and highly regulated mission-critical systems","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"On-demand Compute"},{"name":"BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)"}],"summary":"Free tier + pay-as-you-go serverless/dedicated. Enterprise and Business Critical plans available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://zilliz.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T13:12:36.259Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.starting_gbp | - | 0 |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 5 | - |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.95 |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.iso27001 | - | yes |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

| Capability | Milvus | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Managed |
| 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 | Tiered |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants) | - | ✓ |
| Horizontal scale | Sharded / distributed | Sharded / distributed |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Proprietary |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Dedicated DBMS | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-08-07T00:01:56.509Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*