What is Milvus?
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.
Milvus pricing
We don't have Milvus's full plan breakdown yet (its pricing page resisted automated reading). Here's what we could confirm. Always check live pricing for exact numbers.
Open-source with optional managed Zilliz Cloud (serverless and dedicated cluster; free trial available)
What Milvus does
The capabilities that matter for vector databases, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Serverless / consumption pricing
- ✓
- ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat)
- -
- Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean)
- -
- Metadata filtering
- -
- Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion)
- ✓
- Built-in BM25 / lexical
- -
- Quantization
- -
- On-disk vs in-memory
- Disk-backed
- Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants)
- -
- Horizontal scale
- Sharded / distributed
- Consistency
- -
- Licence class
- Permissive OSS
- Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent
- Dedicated DBMS
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- macOS
- Linux
- Windows
- Cloud / SaaS
- Hybrid
- Self-hosted
Milvus alternatives
Other vector databases we track, ranked by the same independent score.
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Milvus, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Github Activity | 63 | 0.15 | 9.6 | ✓ |
| Release Cadence | 97 | 0.09 | 8.8 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 46 | 0.13 | 5.9 | ✓ |
| Github Stars | 88 | 0.05 | 4.7 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 0 | 0.06 | 0.0 | - |
| Security Posture | 0 | 0.14 | 0.0 | - |
| Package Downloads | 0 | 0.04 | 0.0 | - |
| Stackoverflow Activity | 0 | 0.15 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Activity
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commits last 30d | 100 | mediumsource · 2026-07-31 · 65% |
Adoption
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Github stars | 45,440 | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 90% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 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"} | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |
Language
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Go | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 90% |
License
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Spdx | Apache-2.0 | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 95% |
Pricing
Release
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence days | 5 | mediumsource · 2026-07-31 · 70% |