Milvus
Free tierThe High-Performance Vector Database Built for Scale
Free tier available·All audiences·API available·Open source
Key strengths
High-performance vector similarity searchHorizontal scalability to tens of billions of vectorsOpen-source with Apache 2.0 licenseMultiple deployment options (Lite, Standalone, Distributed, Managed Cloud)Metadata filtering, hybrid search, multi-vector supportActive community and extensive ecosystem tooling
Free tier + paid plans
Founded 2019
Self-hostable
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Developer Documentation & Resources
Installation
Milvus can be installed quickly via pip for Milvus Lite (embedded mode), making it easy to prototype locally before scaling to Standalone or Distributed deployments.
pip install pymilvus
API & SDKs
- Milvus exposes a well-documented API for vector insert, index, and search operations
- The primary Python SDK (
pymilvus) is the main integration point; additional language clients are available - Supports operations including: collection management, vector upsert, ANN (Approximate Nearest Neighbor) search, metadata filtering, and hybrid search queries
Key Technical Concepts
- Collections — analogous to tables; store vectors alongside scalar metadata fields
- Index types — multiple indexing strategies supported for tuning recall vs. latency trade-offs
- Hybrid search — combine vector similarity with structured metadata filters in a single query
- Multi-vector support — query across multiple vector fields within a single collection
Tooling
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
Attu | Web-based GUI for cluster management and data exploration |
Milvus CLI | Command-line interface for administrative operations |
Milvus Backup | Data backup and restore utility |
VTS (Vector Transport Service) | Vector data migration and transport |
Deep Searcher | Advanced search tooling |
Claude Context | Integration with Claude AI context workflows |
Zilliz Cloud | Fully managed Milvus cloud service |
Deployment
- Self-hosted: Lite → Standalone → Distributed (scale as needed)
- Managed: Zilliz Cloud (SaaS or BYOC), serverless and dedicated cluster tiers
- License: Apache 2.0 — free to use, modify, and distribute