Pick Milvus if
search / RAG teams who will stay on the OSS binary at $0 while they open a first Data Explorer, then buy Zilliz Cloud when they want a hosted SLA — not a second self-hosted vector DB.
Read the Milvus pageMilvus vs Zilliz
Our take
Pick Milvus if search / RAG teams who will stay on the OSS binary at $0 while they open a first Data Explorer, then buy Zilliz Cloud when they want a hosted SLA — not a second self-hosted vector DB. Pick Zilliz if search teams who will stay on Free at $0 (5 GB) while they create a first cluster, then buy Dedicated from $197 / month when they need the SLA.
Best for
Milvus A collection table you start at a public $
Zilliz Vector collections you start at $0
Free plan
Milvus $0 · apache-2.0. Self-host (Docker / K8s / binary). Attu admin UI is Apache-2.0 at zilliztech/attu
Zilliz $0 · 5 GB storage. “Start for Free.”
Lowest paid
Milvus Not published by the vendor
Zilliz Not published by the vendor
Coding agent
Milvus Agent + Tab inside the editor
Zilliz
Runs where
Milvus Local or hosted
Zilliz Hosted
Watch out
Milvus OSS is ops you run
Zilliz Free is 5 GB
Last checked
Milvus 2026-10-23 · zilliz.com/pricing
Zilliz 2026-10-23 · zilliz.com/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Zilliz if
search teams who will stay on Free at $0 (5 GB) while they create a first cluster, then buy Dedicated from $197 / month when they need the SLA.
Read the Zilliz page