Self-Hosted vs Managed Vector Databases (2026)
The core trade-off when picking a vector database. Both are valid — it depends on your team's ops capacity and budget.
| Dimension | Self-hosted | Managed |
|---|---|---|
| Cost at low scale | Cheaper (your hardware) | Higher (per-usage pricing) |
| Ops overhead | You run/scale/back up | Provider handles it |
| Lock-in | None / portable | Tied to provider |
| Control & data residency | Full | Limited |
| Time to first query | Slower (setup) | Minutes |
Tools with a managed option
- Milvus → Zilliz Cloud
- Qdrant → Qdrant Cloud
- Chroma → Chroma Cloud
- pgvector → any managed Postgres
- Weaviate → Weaviate Cloud
- LanceDB → LanceDB Cloud
- Vespa → Vespa Cloud
- Marqo → Marqo Cloud
- Pinecone → Pinecone (managed only)
Self-hostable (open-source)
Milvus · FAISS · Qdrant · Chroma · pgvector · Weaviate · LanceDB · Vespa · Marqo