Milvus vs Pinecone
Milvus: Cloud-native, distributed open-source vector database built for billions of vectors. Pinecone: Fully managed serverless vector database with built-in embedding, reranking and assistants.
key differences
- Licensing: Milvus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); Pinecone is proprietary (Proprietary SaaS).
- Milvus is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Pinecone (≤ 1 PB).
- Only Milvus has full-text search, change data capture, ttl / expiry, compression, online schema changes.
- Only Pinecone has encryption at rest.
- Pinecone has a serverless option; Milvus does not.
- Milvus can run embedded in your application process.
choose milvus for
- +Billion-scale semantic and image search
- +RAG platforms serving many teams
- +Recommendation and deduplication
- +Multimodal retrieval over lakehouse data
best at · Vector search, RAG, Search
choose pinecone for
- +RAG over company documents
- +Semantic search in SaaS products
- +Recommendation and similarity lookups
- +Multi-tenant AI apps with per-customer namespaces
best at · Vector search, RAG
Milvus vs Pinecone: FAQ
What is the difference between Milvus and Pinecone?
Milvus: Cloud-native, distributed open-source vector database built for billions of vectors. Pinecone: Fully managed serverless vector database with built-in embedding, reranking and assistants. Licensing: Milvus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); Pinecone is proprietary (Proprietary SaaS). Milvus is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Pinecone (≤ 1 PB). Only Milvus has full-text search, change data capture, ttl / expiry, compression, online schema changes.
When should I choose Milvus over Pinecone?
Choose Milvus for billion-scale semantic and image search; RAG platforms serving many teams; and recommendation and deduplication. Choose Pinecone for RAG over company documents; semantic search in SaaS products; and recommendation and similarity lookups.
Is Milvus or Pinecone more popular?
Milvus ranks #35 on the WhichDB Score (45.9/100) and Pinecone ranks #213 (15.5/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.
Are Milvus and Pinecone open source?
Yes. Milvus is open source. License: Apache License 2.0. No. Pinecone is proprietary, closed-source software.