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.
| Feature | Blast | Milvus |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 14 · At risk | 100 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| 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 | ★ 1,073 | ★ 46,223 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Pinecone, Elasticsearch |
What are Blast and Milvus?
Blast
Blast is a full-text search and indexing server written in Go and built on the Bleve library, with support for clustering through the Raft consensus algorithm. It exposes both gRPC and HTTP APIs for indexing and searching documents.
- Distributed clustering
- Bleve-based indexing
- gRPC and HTTP APIs
- Raft consensus
Milvus
Milvus is an open-source vector database designed for scalable similarity search and AI applications. It can manage billions of vectors and supports semantic search and recommendation use cases.
- Billion-scale vector search
- Multiple index types
- Cloud-native distributed architecture
- Hybrid search support
Blast vs Milvus: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Blast's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Milvus is actively maintained. Both projects are written in Go. Blast is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 4,096 MB for Milvus. Blast is the more established project (first released 2017), while Milvus arrived in 2019. Milvus has the considerably larger community, at 46,223 GitHub stars versus 1,073.
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
Choose Milvus if…
- Scales to massive datasets
- Mature vector ecosystem
Watch out for
- Complex distributed deployment
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.
Which is lighter on resources, Blast or Milvus?
Blast has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 4,096 MB for Milvus. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.