Blast vs Vald
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Blast | Vald |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 14 · At risk | 85 · 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 | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | kubernetes, helm, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,073 | ★ 1,730 |
| First released | 2017 | 2020 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Pinecone, Elasticsearch |
What are Blast and Vald?
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
Vald
Vald is a highly scalable distributed vector search engine designed to run on Kubernetes for approximate nearest neighbor search over billions of vectors. It is used for similarity search in recommendation and AI applications.
- Distributed vector search
- Kubernetes-native
- Billion-scale indexes
- Approximate nearest neighbor
Blast vs Vald: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Blast's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Vald is actively maintained. Both projects are written in Go. Blast is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Vald. Blast is the more established project (first released 2017), while Vald arrived in 2020.
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 Vald if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
- Active community (1.7k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is Blast or Vald better?
Neither is universally better. Vald has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Blast and Vald free and open-source?
Yes. Blast is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vald under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Blast and Vald with Docker?
Blast: yes. Vald: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Blast or Vald?
Blast has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Vald. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.