Pgvector vs LanceDB

Pgvector vs. LanceDB

Compare Pgvector vs. LanceDB by the following set of capabilities. We want you to choose the best database for you, even if it’s not us.

Pgvector vs. LanceDB on Scalability

PgvectorLanceDB

Separation of storage and compute

Yes. pgvector enables separation of storage and compute by allowing you to store your application data on one database while storing vectors, lookup values, and filter values on a separate database.

Yes.

Separation of query and insertions

❌

Multi-replication

✔️

❌

Dynamic segment placement vs. static data sharding

❌

No (static data sharding coming soon)

Cloud-native

❌

Billion-scale vector support

❌

pgvector scalability

You can use a solution like YugaByteDB to extend the capabilities of Postgres for distributed environments.

LanceDB

LanceDB is an open-source vector database that's designed to store, manage, query and retrieve embeddings on multi-modal data. LanceDB and its underlying data format, Lance, are built to scale to really large amounts of data (hundreds of terabytes, 200M+ vectors).

Pgvector vs. LanceDB 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.

Furthermore, differences in insert rate, query rate, and underlying hardware may result in different application needs, making overall system tunability a mandatory feature for vector databases.

PgvectorLanceDB

Role-based Access Control (RBAC)

✔️

❌

Disk Index support

❌

Hybrid Search (ie Scalar filtering)

Yes. Sparse & Dense Vectors and Scalar filtering.

Yes, vector search & keyword search

Partitions/namespaces/logical groups

❌

Index type supported

HNSW & IVFFlat

IVF-PQ, HNSW

(LanceDB adopts a disk-based indexing philosophy.)

Multiple in-memory indexes support

❌

Pgvector vs. LanceDB on Purpose-built

PgvectorLanceDB

Purpose-built for Vectors

pgvector is an add-on to Postgres

❌

Tunable consistency

✔️

❌

Support for both stream and batch of vector data

✔️

❌

Binary Vector support

❌

Multi-language SDK

Use pgvector from any language with a Postgres client

Python, Javascript/Typescript, and Rust

Database rollback

✔️

Pgvector vs. LanceDB: what’s right for me?

Pgvector

pgvector is a PostgreSQL extension designed to facilitate the storage, querying, and indexing of vectors within a PostgreSQL database.

License: PostgreSQL License

LanceDB

LanceDB is an open-source vector database that's designed to store, manage, query and retrieve embeddings on multi-modal data. It also provides a SaaS solution called LanceDB Cloud that runs serverless in the cloud.

Apache 2.0