Vector database feature comparison

This compares the features available in Vespa and Vespa Cloud to the leading alternatives. While we have aimed to include all significant features present in any of these engines, this probably still reflects what we in the Vespa team consider important based on our 20 years of experience serving workloads involving AI and big data, online at large scale.

Overview Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Vector similarity search Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Structured data search Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Full-text search Yes Yes No No Limited Limited No
Combine multiple search criteria and modes in one query Yes Limited Limited Yes Limited Limited No
Grouping/aggregation/faceting Yes Yes No No Yes No No
Rank by any signals, using any function or ML model Yes No No No No No No
Realtime writes Yes Limited Limited Limited Limited Yes No
Seamless scaling Yes Limited Limited Limited Limited Limited No
Application level deployments and management Yes No No No No No No
Proven in production at scale Yes Yes No Yes No No No
Optimized for timeseries analytics No Yes No Yes No No No
Open source Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Managed option Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Embeddable No No No No No No Yes
Matching features Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Multiple vector fields per document Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Multiple vector values per document field Yes No No No No No No
Unlimited vector dimensions Yes No Yes Limited Yes Yes Yes
Efficient vector field writes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
WAND text retrieval Yes Yes No No No No No
Fuzzy retrieval Yes Yes No No No No No
Exact vector retrieval Yes No No Yes No Yes No
GEO retrieval Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Search multiple schemas/sources in a query Yes Yes No No No No No
Inference, computation and ranking features Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
General tensor support Yes No No No No No No
Sparse vector/tensor dimensions Yes No Limited No No No No
General computation/inference over features at ranking time Yes No No No No No No
GEO signals Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Text matching signals Yes Limited No No No No No
Text proximity ranking signals Yes Yes No No No No No
Distributed second-phase re-ranking Yes No No No Yes No No
Global-phase reranking Yes Yes No No Limited No No
Return any inferred scalars/tensors with results Yes No No No No No No
GBDT ML model evaluation Yes No No No No No No
Onnx ML model evaluation Yes No No No No No No
Multiple rank/inference profiles per schema Yes No No No Limited No No
Performance and efficiency features Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Cost effective and complete vector retrieval of personal dataYes No No No No No No
Configurable vector precision Yes No No Limited No No No
Multiple threads per query per node Yes No No No No No No
Paged fields Yes No No No Yes Yes No
Choose which fields to index Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Choose which fields to return in a response Yes Yes No No No No Yes
Parent-child denormalized fields Yes Yes No No No No No
Application development and management features Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Vector embedding performed inside the engine Yes No No No Yes No Yes
Query/result/write components as part of the application Yes No No No Limited No No
Declarative index mapping Yes Limited No No No No No
Automatic data garbage collection Yes Yes No No No No No
Collection fields Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Linguistics processing Yes Yes No No No Yes No
Query profiles Yes No No No No No No
Write data without a schema No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Writes are validated against schema Yes Yes No Yes Limited Yes No
Safely change schemas while online Yes Yes No No Limited No N/A
Multiple schemas per application Yes No No No Yes No No
Multiple clusters per application Yes No No No No No No
Scaling: Multiple replicas with automatic load balancing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Scaling: Multiple shards with scatter-gather Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No
Scaling: Make any change to topology resources while online Yes Limited No No No No No
Scaling: Fully automatic shard placement and configuration Yes No N/A Yes N/A No N/A
Cross-cluster replication No Yes No No No No No
Other features Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Text snippeting Yes Yes No No No No No
Predicate fields Yes Yes No No No No No
Rich features for timeseries analytics No Yes No No No No No
Generative text integration No No No No Yes No No
Managed service Vespa Elasticsearch Pinecone Milvus Weaviate Qdrant Chroma
Safe global continuous deployment of applications Yes No No No No No No
Automatic safe platform upgrades Yes No No No No No No
Control the resources of the application Yes Limited Limited Limited No Yes No
Autoscaling Yes Limited No No No No No
Multi-region/cloud deployments Yes Yes No No No No No
AWS zones Yes Yes Yes Limited No Yes No
GCP zones Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No
Azure zones No Yes No No No No No
Managed in customer account/project/subscription (BYOC) Yes No No No No No No

Last updated: September 2023.

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