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CockroachDB vs Milvus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CockroachDB
Ranking in Vector Databases
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (12th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (10th)
Milvus
Ranking in Vector Databases
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of CockroachDB is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Milvus is 7.3%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Milvus7.3%
CockroachDB0.6%
Other92.1%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

SC
Manager, Software Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Provides developer-friendly environment with robust security and cost-efficiency
The platform should provide a UI feature where users have the ability to manage it. The CockroachDB platform should have a chatbot where users can inquire about pricing or seek solutions for queries, rather than relying on email support. The current UI only provides SQL playground, which is technical. There should be a UI playground where users with limited technical knowledge can run and update queries, similar to phpMyAdmin or Adminer. Latency optimization could be improved for globally distributed applications, particularly in query routing. For multi-region deployment, CockroachDB requires at least three plus replicas across data centers to achieve strong consistency across regions, which increases infrastructure costs including compute, storage, and networking. The disadvantages include cost-efficiency with multi-region deployment and schema migration speed, which should be faster compared to other drivers. The query optimizer should handle complex queries better through the UI interface.
Sameer Bhangale - PeerSpot reviewer
Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Provides quick and easy containerization, but documentation is not very user-friendly
Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly. Chroma DB provides super user-friendly documentation, enabling new users to get started quickly. Chroma DB's setup doesn't have many dependencies, whereas Milvus usually comes with some dependencies because of the way it needs to be deployed. Unlike Milvus, it's very easy to do POCs with Chroma DB.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like best is its ability to solve data residency issues. The main advantage is auto geo partitioning, built into the product. This means we don't have to spin up separate servers in each region, which would be much more costly."
"The availability and the easy to use feature is the most valuable. The documentation is also good."
"The most valuable feature is that CockroachDB is a distributed database, which can deploy nodes running in different regions."
"The product has valuable security features."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its resiliency features and the geo-partitioning capabilities."
"The best feature of CockroachDB is the ability to keep the nodes in different locations."
"CockroachDB is excellent for managing relationships in RDBMS with multiple benefits such as the ability to create views and dynamic queries that save data and reduce the use of complex algorithms in code."
"The tool's most valuable feature is node syncing, which takes only 0.54 milliseconds."
"I like the accuracy and usability."
"Milvus offers multiple methods for calculating similarities or distances between vectors, such as L2 norm and cosine similarity. These methods help in comparing different vectors based on specific use cases. For instance, in our use case, we find that the L2 distance works best, but you can experiment with different methods to find the most suitable one for your needs."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."
"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."
 

Cons

"I think the engine itself could be improved. If you miss a partition key, it should be able to be modeled. This is where AI could be really helpful. For example, if a user is from Australia, the system should know to look for their data there first instead of searching in the US or another continent."
"Cockroach does not support all types of protocols. I need to improve it myself to support a CouchDB on my network."
"CockroachDB needs to improve store processes."
"The initial setup and pricing could be improved."
"For multi-region deployment, CockroachDB requires at least three plus replicas across data centers to achieve strong consistency across regions, which increases infrastructure costs including compute, storage, and networking."
"The platform could be more extensible."
"The product must improve its disaster recovery features."
"I would like CockroachDB to have more compatibility with PostgreSQL, especially with the connection string and technical integrations."
"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."
"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."
"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's price depends on the user's company and the contract model they enter into with CockroachDB. Depending on the contract model one enters into with CockroachDB, the product may or may not be expensive."
"I've used CockroachDB at a small scale on the free accounts because we are only testing."
"The pricing is good but can be made cheaper. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The platform is affordable even for the enterprise version. It provides value for investment in terms of performance."
"The solution's pricing is not cheap. However, the good thing is that customers are willing to pay for it if they want it."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with CockroachDB?
The platform should provide a UI feature where users have the ability to manage it. The CockroachDB platform should have a chatbot where users can inquire about pricing or seek solutions for querie...
What is your primary use case for CockroachDB?
We have been using CockroachDB for the last two years. From 2023, we started working on a product similar to Google Capture. We decided to work with CockroachDB with Hasura. Hasura is a UI for the ...
What advice do you have for others considering CockroachDB?
The tech support deserves a rating of nine out of ten. My overall rating for CockroachDB is 8 out of 10.
What do you like most about Milvus?
I like the accuracy and usability.
What needs improvement with Milvus?
Milvus could be improved how it could automatically generate insights from the data it holds. Milvus maintains embedding information and knows the relationships between data points. It would be use...
What is your primary use case for Milvus?
Milvus is primarily used in RAG, which involves retrieving relevant documents or data to augment the generation of new content. Milvus helps convert text and other data into a vector space, and the...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baidu, Kindred, Tierion, Heroic Labs, Gorgias
1. Alibaba Group 2. Tencent 3. Baidu 4. JD.com 5. Meituan 6. Xiaomi 7. Didi Chuxing 8. ByteDance 9. Huawei 10. ZTE 11. Lenovo 12. Haier 13. China Mobile 14. China Telecom 15. China Unicom 16. Ping An Insurance 17. China Life Insurance 18. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 19. Bank of China 20. Agricultural Bank of China 21. China Construction Bank 22. PetroChina 23. Sinopec 24. China National Offshore Oil Corporation 25. China Southern Airlines 26. Air China 27. China Eastern Airlines 28. China Railway Group 29. China Railway Construction Corporation 30. China Communications Construction Company 31. China Merchants Group 32. China Evergrande Group
Find out what your peers are saying about CockroachDB vs. Milvus and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.