Milvus vs Vertex AI Vector Search
Milvus: Cloud-native, distributed open-source vector database built for billions of vectors. Vertex AI Vector Search: Google Cloud's managed ANN service built on ScaNN, now part of Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.
key differences
- Licensing: Milvus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); Vertex AI Vector Search is proprietary (Proprietary (Google Cloud service)).
- Only Milvus has full-text search, json, change data capture, ttl / expiry, compression.
- Only Vertex AI Vector Search has encryption at rest.
- 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 vertex-ai-vector-search for
- +Large-scale semantic search on GCP
- +Recommendation candidate retrieval
- +RAG for Gemini-based agents
- +Image and product similarity
best at · Vector search, RAG
Milvus vs Vertex AI Vector Search: FAQ
What is the difference between Milvus and Vertex AI Vector Search?
Milvus: Cloud-native, distributed open-source vector database built for billions of vectors. Vertex AI Vector Search: Google Cloud's managed ANN service built on ScaNN, now part of Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Licensing: Milvus is open source (permissive) (Apache License 2.0); Vertex AI Vector Search is proprietary (Proprietary (Google Cloud service)). Only Milvus has full-text search, json, change data capture, ttl / expiry, compression. Only Vertex AI Vector Search has encryption at rest.
When should I choose Milvus over Vertex AI Vector Search?
Choose Milvus for billion-scale semantic and image search; RAG platforms serving many teams; and recommendation and deduplication. Choose Vertex AI Vector Search for large-scale semantic search on GCP, recommendation candidate retrieval and RAG for Gemini-based agents.
Is Milvus or Vertex AI Vector Search more popular?
Milvus ranks #35 on the WhichDB Score (45.9/100) and Vertex AI Vector Search ranks #141 (21.2/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.
Are Milvus and Vertex AI Vector Search open source?
Yes. Milvus is open source. License: Apache License 2.0. No. Vertex AI Vector Search is proprietary, closed-source software.