# Milvus vs Zilliz Cloud

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Zilliz Cloud

| Attribute | Milvus | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 58 (57% (medium)) | 79.5 (74% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 7 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 46,047 | - |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"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. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://milvus.io","question":"What is Milvus?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Milvus offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://milvus.io","question":"Is Milvus free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Milvus supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://milvus.io","question":"What platforms does Milvus support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Milvus can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://milvus.io","question":"Can Milvus be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 7 integrations for Milvus, including OpenAI, Sentence Transformers, BGE-M3, SPLADE, Jina AI, BM25 and PyMilvus. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://milvus.io","question":"What does Milvus integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Milvus is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus","question":"Is Milvus open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"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. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What is Zilliz Cloud?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Zilliz Cloud offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans are also available: Free, Serverless, Dedicated and BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud). Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"Is Zilliz Cloud free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Zilliz Cloud supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What platforms does Zilliz Cloud support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Not fully, on what we have confirmed. Zilliz Cloud is offered as cloud / SaaS and hybrid, and a hybrid deployment usually means some components can run on your own infrastructure while the rest stays vendor-hosted. We have not confirmed a completely self-hosted option, so check with the vendor if that is a requirement.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"Can Zilliz Cloud be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 19 integrations for Zilliz Cloud, including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, LangChain, Fivetran, Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, plus 11 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What does Zilliz Cloud integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR for Zilliz Cloud. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Zilliz Cloud not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://zilliz.com/trust-center","question":"What security certifications does Zilliz Cloud have?","confidence":0.7}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | 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. |
| features.capabilities | `{"ann_index":"HNSW, IVF, FLAT, SCANN, DiskANN, GPU_CAGRA","deployment":"self_hosted","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"}` | `{"ann_index":"HNSW, IVF, FLAT (brute-force), SCANN, DiskANN","deployment":"managed","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"tiered","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"proprietary","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"distance_metrics":"cosine, Euclidean","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"post_filter"}` |
| integrations.count | 7 | 1,000 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Sentence Transformers"},{"name":"BGE-M3"},{"name":"SPLADE"},{"name":"Jina AI"},{"name":"BM25"},{"name":"PyMilvus"},{"name":"Jina","category":"reranking"}]` | `[{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"LangChain"},{"name":"Fivetran","native":true,"category":"data_integration"},{"name":"Google Ads","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Analytics 4","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Search Console","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Sheets","native":true,"category":"data_integration"},{"name":"Hubspot","native":true,"category":"crm"},{"name":"LinkedIn Ad Analytics","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Marketo","native":true,"category":"marketing"},{"name":"Microsoft Advertising","native":true,"category":"advertising"},{"name":"NetSuite SuiteAnalytics","native":true,"category":"erp"},{"name":"Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications","native":true,"category":"erp"},{"name":"Apache SeaTunnel","native":true,"category":"data_streaming"},{"name":"PostgreSQL/Pgvector","native":false,"category":"database"},{"name":"PyMilvus","native":true,"category":"sdk"},{"name":"Claude","native":false,"category":"ai_assistant","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Prometheus","native":true,"category":"monitoring","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"HoneyHive","native":true,"category":"observability","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Cohere","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Haystack","native":true,"category":"framework","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"FiftyOne","native":true,"category":"computer_vision","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"DSPy","native":true,"category":"llm","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Voyage AI","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Jina AI","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"n8n","native":true,"category":"automation","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"DocsGPT","native":true,"category":"documentation","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"vLLM","native":true,"category":"llm","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Langflow","native":true,"category":"framework","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Vanna","native":true,"category":"sql","direction":"bidirectional"}]` |
| language.primary | Go | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"free","summary":"Open-source and available for free. Managed hosting available through Zilliz Cloud.","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://milvus.io","retrievedAt":"2026-09-10T21:06:32.662Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"$0/month, 5 GB storage, 5 collections","features":["Community support via Slack","Vector search","Filtered search","Range search"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Community tier with limited resources for non-production use","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"storage":"5 GB/month","collections":"5"}},{"free":false,"name":"Serverless","summary":"Pay-per-query pricing, system-managed auto-scaling","features":["Fully managed vector databases","Backup and restore","Basic monitoring","Built-in encryption for data in transit and at rest","Vector search","Hybrid search","Full text search"],"description":"Usage-based pricing for variable workloads with automatic scaling","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Dedicated","summary":"From $197/month base, plus $0.126/GB storage, dedicated infrastructure","features":["99.95% uptime SLA","SSO (SAML 2.0)","Granular RBAC","Multi-replica and elastic scaling","Global cluster with disaster recovery","Advanced security: CMEK and full-path in-transit encryption","HIPAA-eligible","Audit logs","Cross-region backup","Continuous data protection","All search types","MFA","API key management","Fine-grained metrics with real-time monitoring"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":197,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.126,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Reserved, isolated environments for production workloads with guaranteed performance","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"BYOC","description":"Bring Your Own Cloud deployment with custom infrastructure and compliance requirements","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free tier with 5 GB storage. Serverless pricing from $0/month pay-per-query. Dedicated clusters from $197/month. Annual commitments available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://zilliz.com/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-09-18T12:32:51.755Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":197,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | free | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | high |
| pricing.starting_price | - | `{"amount":197,"currency":"USD"}` |
| pricing.transparent | no | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 10 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v3.0.1","date":"2026-09-09T07:32:57Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/tag/v2.6.23","date":"2026-08-28T07:59:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.6.23"},{"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"}]` | - |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.95 |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.certifications | - | `[{"name":"SOC 2 Type II","level":"Type II","status":"active"},{"name":"ISO/IEC 27001","status":"active"}]` |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.iso27001 | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 4.4 | - |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.trust_center | - | https://zilliz.com/trust-center |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"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 | Milvus | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Managed |
| Serverless / consumption pricing | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Index** |  |  |
| ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat) | HNSW, IVF, FLAT, SCANN, DiskANN, GPU_CAGRA | HNSW, IVF, FLAT (brute-force), SCANN, DiskANN |
| Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean) | cosine, Euclidean, dot product | cosine, Euclidean |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Metadata filtering | Pre-filter | Post-filter |
| Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in BM25 / lexical | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Storage** |  |  |
| Quantization | Product | - |
| On-disk vs in-memory | Disk-backed | Tiered |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Horizontal scale | Sharded / distributed | Sharded / distributed |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | Eventual | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Proprietary |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Dedicated DBMS | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-09-21T06:24:25.364Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*