Milvus
6.3#13 in vector databasesFree planFree planAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitMilvus vs Pinecone
Pinecone
7.8#3 in ai search and discovery platforms softwareFrom $20 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxmacOS
VisitWhat both publish
| Fact | Milvus | Pinecone |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The integrations documentation lists tools including LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, DSPy, Dify, Langflow, OpenAI, Cohere, and HuggingFace. | The partner ecosystem covers AI and machine-learning tools, search, cloud infrastructure and services integrations. |
| Product | Milvus is an open-source vector database built for GenAI applications. | Pinecone describes its product as a fully managed vector database built for AI workloads. |
| SDKs | Milvus provides official REST, Python, Go, Java, Node.js, and C++ APIs or SDKs; C# is contributed by Microsoft and Rust is under development. | Official SDKs include Python, TypeScript/Node.js, Java, Go and .NET clients. |
| Search | Milvus supports approximate nearest neighbor, filtering, range, hybrid, and full-text search, plus reranking, fetch, and query operations. | The database supports dense, sparse, and full-text indexes, metadata filters, and namespaces. |
| Security | Milvus documents user authentication, TLS encryption for gRPC and REST traffic, and role-based access control. | Pinecone states that it encrypts data at rest and in transit using AES-256 and supports API key roles and RBAC. |
Milvus plans
- Milvus (open-source software)Free
Pinecone plans
- Builder$20 a month
- Standard$50 a month
- Enterprise$500 a month
- StarterFree
- Bring your own cloud (BYOC)Priced on request
Pick Milvus if…
Milvus suits developers and teams building vector search into GenAI applications, from local experiments to large Kubernetes deployments. Its Lite option can also suit users who need local search over private or sensitive data.
Pick Pinecone if…
Pinecone suits teams building AI applications that need vector search, recommendations, or retrieval-augmented generation. Its web and API access, integrations, and multiple index types support varied implementation needs.