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Firebird SQL vs Milvus 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

Firebird SQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Embedded Database (1st)
Milvus
Ranking in Open Source Databases
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Firebird SQL is 17.7%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Milvus is 5.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Nicolae Ancuta - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong event capabilities, allowing raising and displaying events in applications
On large databases, we have some difficulties. It is one of the areas of improvement. For example, under one gigabyte, it works perfectly. Between one and five gigabytes, you might experience some slight performance issues, but they are not significant. Beyond that, you have to index it, tier it, and perform some restore operations to free up space. It requires some effort, but it's manageable. It's quite challenging for the customer. Moreover, migrating from one firewall solution to another was a little bit difficult regarding the backup and restoring the other one. Since we have many databases, we didn't go forward with the latest versions.
Sameer Bhangale - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution and can run on most operating systems, such as Linux, Unix, and Windows."
"The product was easy to use."
"We are happy with the event capabilities of Firebird SQL database. We can raise events from it and display them in our application."
"I like that we don't have to pay external fees to migrate this data. So, we are looking to relocate from Postgres or EDB."
"The most valuable feature of Firebird SQL is the creation of databases."
"I find the ease of deployment to be the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The solution is very useful for stock management."
"Robustness is the absolutely main feature."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."
"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a graphical user interface to handle the product."
"The security of the users could improve in Firebird SQL."
"Database sharing is a capability that Firebird SQL lacks."
"Firebird SQL's performance has slowed since Firebird SQL 3 or 3.5 versions, where they developed over-the-wire encryption."
"I don't think the solution is very scalable, because the scalability of the performance when using more than one process is not very good."
"In the next release, it should support JSON, XML, and replication with third-party tools."
"We would like to improve the management of very large databases."
"It would be good to have more automation and integration with the tools from other vendors."
"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."
"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."
"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I was using the free version of Firebird SQL."
"We are using the free solution, so there is no cost involved."
"There is no licensing cost for this solution, as it is open-source."
"It is a public domain system as every customer can install it on their system without paying any license fee."
"It's open-source and free."
"There is a yearly maintenance fee for the use of the solution."
"Firebird SQL is an open-source solution, which means it is a free product."
"It is okay."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What do you like most about Firebird SQL?
Firebird SQL is an open-source solution.
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

Elekt Labs, Streamsoft, wobe-systems GmbH, DRB Systems, Moscow City Hospital #31
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 Firebird SQL vs. Milvus and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.