What is Milvus?
Milvus is an open-source vector database created by Zilliz in 2019 and donated to the LF AI & Data Foundation in 2020, where it is now a graduated project. It is licensed under Apache 2.0 and offers multiple deployment modes: Milvus Lite (embedded, for local development), Standalone (single machine), and a distributed cluster mode for billion-vector scale. Zilliz also offers Zilliz Cloud as a fully managed alternative.
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: official website, documentation, GitHub repository.
Key capabilities
- Multiple deployment modes: Lite, Standalone or distributed cluster, matching your scale.
- Billion-scale ANN search: Built for high-throughput approximate nearest-neighbor queries.
- Managed option: Zilliz Cloud for teams that don't want to operate a cluster.
Vector database infrastructure for large-scale AI similarity search is the primary use case.
Shortlist Milvus when you need to scale vector search beyond a single embedded database, with a growth path from local development (Milvus Lite) to a distributed production cluster or Zilliz's managed cloud.
Confirm which deployment mode matches your actual scale and compare the operational effort of self-hosting a cluster against Zilliz Cloud's usage-based pricing.
Technical details
- Access
- Self-hosted
- Source model
- Open source
- Founded
- 2019
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- API
- Not specified
- Website
- milvus.io ↗
Official resources
What to verify for your environment
Start from the users, systems and operating responsibilities the tool needs to support.
- Confirm current features, licensing and support terms with the publisher.
- Validate deployment, data location, access control, backup and recovery requirements.
- Test integrations, export paths and a representative operational workflow before committing.
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