Milvus vs Qdrant
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Qdrant
High-performance open-source vector search engine
| Feature | Milvus | Qdrant |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 100 · Excellent | 98 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 4,096 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 46,245 | ★ 34,775 |
| First released | 2019 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Pinecone, Elasticsearch | Pinecone, Algolia |
What are Milvus and Qdrant?
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
Qdrant
Qdrant is an open-source vector similarity search engine and database written in Rust. It powers semantic search, recommendations and retrieval-augmented generation with a convenient API.
- Fast vector similarity search
- Payload filtering with vectors
- Distributed clustering
- REST and gRPC APIs
Milvus vs Qdrant: key differences
Milvus is written in Go, while Qdrant is built with Rust. Qdrant is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 4,096 MB for Milvus. Milvus is the more established project (first released 2019), while Qdrant arrived in 2021.
Why pick each one
Choose Milvus if…
- Scales to massive datasets
- Mature vector ecosystem
Watch out for
- Complex distributed deployment
Choose Qdrant if…
- Excellent performance
- Easy to deploy
Watch out for
- Specialized for vector workloads
Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Qdrant better?
Neither is universally better. Milvus has the larger community, while Qdrant is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Milvus and Qdrant free and open-source?
Yes. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Qdrant under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Milvus and Qdrant with Docker?
Milvus: yes. Qdrant: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Milvus or Qdrant?
Qdrant 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.