Blast vs Milvus
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Blast
Distributed full-text search server in Go
VS
Milvus
Open-source vector database built for scalable similarity search
| Feature | Blast | Milvus |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 4,096 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,074 | ★ 45,556 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Pinecone, Elasticsearch |
Why pick each one
Choose Blast if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Frequently asked questions
Is Blast or Milvus better?
Neither is universally better. Milvus has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Blast and Milvus free and open-source?
Yes. Blast is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Milvus under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Blast and Milvus with Docker?
Blast: yes. Milvus: yes.