Milvus vs Qdrant
A neutral, data-driven comparison — live metrics, use-case guidance and FAQ to help you pick.
At a glance
| Milvus | Qdrant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 44,805 | 32,389 |
| PyPI downloads / mo | 5,919,923 | 23,963,183 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Type | database | database |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Managed option | Zilliz Cloud | Qdrant Cloud |
| Latest release | v2.6.18 | v1.18.2 |
Which should you choose?
Choose Milvus if…
- You need to scale to billions of vectors with a distributed, cloud-native architecture
- You want GPU-accelerated indexing and search
- You already run Kubernetes and can handle a heavier deployment
Choose Qdrant if…
- You want a lightweight, single-binary engine that's simple to deploy and operate
- Your scale is small-to-large (millions to low billions) rather than massive
- You value strong metadata filtering and a lean Rust core
Milvus is built for massive, distributed scale (and GPU), but is heavier to run; Qdrant is lighter and simpler to operate while still production-grade. Choose Milvus for billion-scale on Kubernetes; Qdrant for simpler ops at small-to-large scale.
What they are
Milvus: Milvus is a high-performance, cloud-native vector database built for scalable vector ANN search
Qdrant: Qdrant - High-performance, massive-scale Vector Database and Vector Search Engine for the next generation of AI. Also available in the cloud https://cloud.qdrant.io/
FAQ
Is Milvus or Qdrant better for large scale?
Milvus is designed for distributed, billion-scale workloads and GPU acceleration; Qdrant scales well too but is lighter-weight. For the very largest deployments Milvus has the edge; for simpler ops, Qdrant.
Is Qdrant easier to deploy than Milvus?
Generally yes — Qdrant ships as a single binary/container, while Milvus has a more distributed architecture often run on Kubernetes.
Do both support metadata filtering?
Yes, both support filtered vector search; Qdrant is particularly known for its payload filtering.
Are both open-source?
Yes — Milvus (Apache-2.0) and Qdrant (Apache-2.0), and both offer managed clouds (Zilliz Cloud for Milvus, Qdrant Cloud).