Milvus vs Toshi
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Milvus | Toshi |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 100 · Excellent | 79 · Good |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 4,096 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 46,245 | ★ 4,256 |
| First released | 2019 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Pinecone, Elasticsearch | Elasticsearch |
What are Milvus and Toshi?
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
Toshi
Toshi is a self-hosted full-text search server that exposes an Elasticsearch-like JSON REST API on top of the Tantivy search engine. It targets developers who want a simple, fast search service in Rust.
- JSON REST API
- Tantivy-backed indexing
- Fast Rust core
- Simple to run
Milvus vs Toshi: key differences
Milvus is written in Go, while Toshi is built with Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Milvus versus MIT for Toshi. Toshi is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 4,096 MB for Milvus. Milvus has the considerably larger community, at 46,245 GitHub stars versus 4,256.
Why pick each one
Choose Milvus if…
- Scales to massive datasets
- Mature vector ecosystem
Watch out for
- Complex distributed deployment
Choose Toshi if…
- Lightweight search server
- Familiar API style
Watch out for
- Less mature than ES
- Smaller feature set
Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Toshi better?
Neither is universally better. Milvus has the larger community, while Toshi is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Milvus and Toshi free and open-source?
Yes. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Toshi under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Milvus and Toshi with Docker?
Milvus: yes. Toshi: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Milvus or Toshi?
Toshi has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 4,096 MB for Milvus. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.