FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud
Compare FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud by the following set of capabilities. We want you to choose the best database for you, even if it’s not us.
FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud on Scalability
Yes.
No. Can not scale beyond single node.
Yes. At the component level (which provides more fine-grained scalability)
No distributed data replacement
Dynamic segment placement
FAISS scalability
Without any distributed data replacement, FAISS is not able to scale beyond a single node
Zilliz Cloud
Zilliz Cloud is a managed vector database service powered by Milvus. Its cloud-native architecture dynamically scales to 10B+ vectors, maintaining high performance and cost-efficiency without the need for new clusters or data sharding.
FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud 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, Hybrid sparse and dense search, hybrid keyword and vector search, hybrid vector search and scalar filtering, multimodal search
Yes.
FLAT, IVS_FLAT, IVF_SQ8, IVF_PQ, HNSW, BIN_FLAT and BIN_IVF_FLAT
Cardinal (The world's first AI-based Autoindex mechanism that selects the best search strategy and index for each dataset, eliminating the need for manual tuning.), closed-source.
FAISS functionality
FAISS is an algorithm to support kNN search.
Zilliz Cloud
Zilliz Cloud is a managed vector database service powered by Milvus. It uses the world's first AI-based Autoindex mechanism that selects the best search strategy and index for each dataset, eliminating the need for manual tuning. It offers intelligent resource management and tiered storage capabilities to minimize expenses while maintaining superior query speeds, ensuring you never compromise performance.
FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud 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
Python, JavaScript
Python, Java, JavaScript, Go, C++, and Node.js SDKs Fully supported
FAISS vs. Zilliz Cloud: 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
Zilliz Cloud
Zilliz Cloud is a fully managed vector database powered by the open-source Milvus vector database.
SaaS
The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Vector Database
Overwhelmed by all the options? Learn key features to look for & how to evaluate with your own data. Choose with confidence.