Groonga 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?
Groonga
Open-source full-text search engine and column store
VS
Milvus
Open-source vector database built for scalable similarity search
| Feature | Groonga | Milvus |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | LGPL-2.1 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 4,096 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 854 | ★ 45,556 |
| First released | 2009 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Pinecone, Elasticsearch |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Groonga or Milvus better?
Neither is universally better. Milvus has the larger community, while Groonga is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Groonga and Milvus free and open-source?
Yes. Groonga is licensed under LGPL-2.1 and Milvus under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Groonga and Milvus with Docker?
Groonga: check the project docs for container support. Milvus: yes.