Pick Weaviate if
teams who will stay on Cloud Free $0 (100k objects, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB disk) or self-host, then buy Flex at $45/month when they need HA, 1,000 collections, and pay-as-you-go dimensions.
Read the Weaviate pageWeaviate vs Zilliz
Our take
Pick Weaviate if teams who will stay on Cloud Free $0 (100k objects, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB disk) or self-host, then buy Flex at $45/month when they need HA, 1,000 collections, and pay-as-you-go dimensions. 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.
Zilliz
Managed Milvus. Free
Best for
Weaviate Vectors you can self-host or rent from $45 Flex
Zilliz Vector collections you start at $0
Free plan
Weaviate $0 · forever. 1 cluster / user. 100,000 objects. 1 GB memory. 10 GB disk. 1 collection, up to 3 tenants. Embeddings 2,000 req/day. Query Agent 1,000 req/month. Best-effort SLA
Zilliz $0 · 5 GB storage. “Start for Free.”
Lowest paid
Weaviate Premium Shared / Dedicated $0.003875/mo
Zilliz Not published by the vendor
Next step up
Weaviate Embeddings (list) $0.025
Zilliz
Coding agent
Weaviate Query Agent
Zilliz
Runs where
Weaviate Local; you host it
Zilliz Hosted
Watch out
Weaviate Free is 100k objects and one collection
Zilliz Free is 5 GB
Last checked
Weaviate 2026-10-22 · weaviate.io/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