FAISS vs. Vespa
Compare FAISS vs. Vespa by the following set of capabilities. We want you to choose the best database for you, even if it’s not us.
FAISS vs. Vespa on Scalability
No. Can not scale beyond single node.
Yes.
No distributed data replacement
Both
FAISS scalability
Without any distributed data replacement, FAISS is not able to scale beyond a single node
Vespa
Vespa is a scalable search engine with a robust distributed architecture that supports horizontal scaling by adding more nodes. It features automatic sharding and data redistribution, allowing it to efficiently manage large datasets and high query volumes.
FAISS vs. Vespa on Functionality
Performance is the biggest challenge with vector databases as the number of unstructured data elements stored in a vector database grows into hundreds of millions or billions, and horizontal scaling across multiple nodes becomes paramount.
Yes (paged tensor attributes)
Yes, vector search & keyword seach
FLAT, IVS_FLAT, IVF_SQ8, IVF_PQ, HNSW, BIN_FLAT and BIN_IVF_FLAT
HNSW, Hybrid HNSW-IF (Inverted File), paged tensor attributes
FAISS functionality
FAISS is an algorithm to support kNN search.
Vespa
Vespa is a powerful search engine and vector database that can handle multiple searches simultaneously. It's great at vector search, text search, and searching through structured data.
FAISS vs. Vespa on Purpose-built
What’s your vector database for?
A vector database is a fully managed solution for storing, indexing, and searching across a massive dataset of unstructured data that leverages the power of embeddings from machine learning models. A vector database should have the following features:
- Scalability and tunability
- Multi-tenancy and data isolation
- A complete suite of APIs
- An intuitive user interface/administrative console
Yes.
Python, JavaScript
Python, Java
FAISS vs. Vespa: what’s right for me?
FAISS
Faiss is a powerful library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors, with GPU-accelerated algorithms and Python wrappers, developed at FAIR, the fundamental AI research team at Meta License: MIT license
Vespa
Vespa is a powerful search engine and vector database that can handle multiple searches simultaneously. It's great at vector search, text search, and searching through structured data.
Apache 2.0