Milvus vector database
Shares rank 8 of 10 vector databases by recommenders
Open-source vector database recommended for hybrid search, RAG and billions of vectors. Critics point to recent security flaws.
Open-source vector database recommended for hybrid search, RAG and billions of vectors. Critics point to recent security flaws.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 54%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Hybrid and BM25 search support
“The hybrid search (combine dense search and sparse search) is native supported in the Milvus could help us to do better retrieve.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How are you doing RAG locally?” “got lots of new features to support RAG, Agent development, features like BM25, hybrid search etc..”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Databases in 2025: A Year in Review” “Purpose built vector db such as Milvus has mature full-text search / BM25 / Sparse vector support.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “The Case Against PGVector” Popular and mature vector database
“Milvus is an incredibly cool product and a staple in my daily stack.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “MinIO repository is no longer maintained” “Milvus is the most popular vector database in the world.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “7 Years, 2 Rebuilds, 40K+ Stars: Milvus Recap and Roadmap”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Recent security vulnerabilities
“Milvus alone had two nasty CVEs recently, one was a full auth bypass on the proxy component”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “We mapped unauthenticated Vector DBs exposing corporate AI data” “Those recent Milvus CVEs just prove that the perimeter always fails eventually”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “We mapped unauthenticated Vector DBs exposing corporate AI data”
Other vector databases people recommend
The four most recommended other vector databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qdrant | 22 | 3 | 88% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Chroma | 17 | 5 | 77% | 7 | — | Approved |
| sqlite-vec | 17 | 3 | 85% | 7 | — | Approved |
| turbopuffer | 13 | 2 | 87% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Milvus vector databaseThis page | 7 | 6 | 54% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
15 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“standard Vector Databases (Pinecone, Milvus) act as static filing cabinets”
“It was such a scattered wildly composed project, just very bespoke weird strange build, felt so ad hoc”
“Those recent Milvus CVEs just prove that the perimeter always fails eventually”
“Milvus alone had two nasty CVEs recently, one was a full auth bypass on the proxy component”
“Milvus is an incredibly cool product and a staple in my daily stack.”
“The hybrid search (combine dense search and sparse search) is native supported in the Milvus could help us to do better retrieve.”
“the rest of them OOMKilled (out of memory error), including milvus, qdrant, and weaviate”
“got lots of new features to support RAG, Agent development, features like BM25, hybrid search etc..”
“We dropped milvus after they started trying for force their zilliz garbage saas down our throats.”
“For people who run thousands of QPS on billions of vectors, Milvus is a solid choice.”
“there is a fun project Milvus Lite designed for that case”
“Milvus is the most popular vector database in the world.”
“Milvus is following the playbook that they've been following for years- integrate with and boost any framework or product that they can to maintain the appearance of a use-case.”
“it seems like a great option”
“Purpose built vector db such as Milvus has mature full-text search / BM25 / Sparse vector support.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.