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Faiss vs MariaDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

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

Faiss
Ranking in Open Source Databases
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (5th)
MariaDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 6.7%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
MariaDB6.7%
Faiss3.6%
Other89.7%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Kalindu Sekarage - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration improves accuracy and supports token-level embedding
The best features FAISS offers for my team include seamless integration with Colbert and the ability to use FAISS via the Ragatouille framework, which is tailor-made for using the Colbert model. Feature-wise, FAISS allows for more accurate result retrieval, and retrieval speed is also good when comparing the index size. Regarding features, I also emphasize that the usability of FAISS is very seamless, particularly its integration with Colbert and Ragatouille. FAISS has positively impacted my organization by helping us increase the accuracy of retrieval documents; when we store documents in token-level embedding, the accuracy will be high. Additionally, we do not need any external server to host FAISS, allowing us to integrate it with our backend framework, making it a very flexible framework.
KumarManish - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, cost-effective, and integrates seamlessly with other products
We had planned for an RDBMS version and not NoSQL. We use MariaDB Galera Cluster. It's a good product. It is cheap, scalable, performs well, and is efficient. We use GCP’s BigQuery for machine learning. We must follow the best practices of the tool. We missed some best practices like the storage engine and InnoDB. It was very difficult to identify why we were having performance issues. Then, we realized that some of our tables were still on MyISAM, the default storage engine. When we switched it back to the InnoDB, it was very smooth. InnoDB is the recommended one. We must follow the best practices given in the documentation during the initial setup. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"The stability of MariaDB is good, it has high availability."
"The product has good documentation and you can find many examples online."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is a relational database, which is fairly reliable...It is a stable solution."
"I am editing."
"It is a scalable solution. It easily scales up and scales down."
"One of the great features of MariaDB is its scalability. It's easy to handle even with large databases."
"The most valuable feature of MariaDB is that it is open-source and we can easily migrate from other databases, such as Oracle to MariaDB."
"From a customer perspective, MariaDB is a good choice for cluster configuration. It's also easy to operate and cheap."
 

Cons

"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"One of the drawbacks of Faiss is that it works only in-memory. If it could provide separate persistent storage without relying on in-memory, it would reduce the overhead."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"MariaDB can improve by adding more features. There are a lot of features, which are available in Oracle, and which are not available in MariaDB. We hope they will introduce the features soon."
"Master-master replication is something that needs to be simplified."
"Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues."
"The performance could be a bit better."
"It doesn't have the same level of maturity metrics as Postgres."
"In future releases, mainly the addition of security features would be beneficial for MariaDB."
"Lacks time series data and additional driving support would be helpful."
"Replication could be better, and it's not so simple. It would be better if they had a replication server. It would make things a lot easier. You need to have that replication server, but not in the same server farm. Then there will be a bit of latency between both because you should have one in one city and another one in a different city. That kind of solution should be more baked into every single database today. Mirroring the database in a live environment where any record written on the production server replicates instantly across the fiber on the other server wasn't easy. Many people don't even bother with that, and they just run one server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"We pay for a yearly license."
"The cost is quite good. You can have the open source, free version, which has adequate capacity."
"MariaDB is open-source and self-hosted."
"It's an open-source solution."
"This is an open-source product, which can be used free of charge."
"The product is not expensive."
"The price could be less expensive."
"MariaDB is an open-source software, meaning I don't need to pay for the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Faiss?
I did not purchase FAISS through the AWS Marketplace because FAISS is an open-source product. My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is straightforward, as there is no cost for acqui...
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I currently do not think there is anything to be improved based on our experience, as Faiss performs as we expected for our workflow. I would like to see improvement in the fact that FAISS currentl...
What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
I have found the price of commercial MariaDB to be pretty steep, although not as high as Oracle. Customers often prefer the Community Edition because it's free.
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The only potential area for improvement could be the pricing model, which might benefit from being more flexible or a bit cheaper.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.