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Milvus vs MySQL 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

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)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 5.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 10.4%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Muzzamil  Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Native encryption ensures secure data management with a simple deployment
The most valuable feature is the on-premises data encryption facilities. By default, we can provide encryption, and this feature in MySQL is why we prefer it over other databases. The native encryption in MySQL encourages us to use this database model more frequently compared to Oracle and other databases. With Oracle, we have to buy another solution for encryption and masking, but MySQL supports native encryption, which enhances our return on investment. It perfectly supports our ROI, and we have no issues with its functionality.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"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."
"MySQL is easy and convenient for me. I don't need to rely on anyone. I can write the code and extract the information. It is fast if you know how to use it. The solution is not expensive, and most of the developers know how to use it. It is easy to create tables. The solution is stable and has good performance. The connection with AWS gives regular updates, which is manual otherwise and a nightmare."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"I like the simplistic view of MySQL to build custom queries and things like that as compared to SQL Server, which seems more cluttered. SQL Server has a query analyzer. MySQL pretty much does the same, and performance-wise, it has less overhead for connecting to our ERP system. It seems more responsive and cleaner. With MySQL, you get what you need without any overbloating, for which Microsoft is known. That's why they have so many constant security patches for everything because there is so much stuff, which degrades performance."
"MySQL's clustering features are very strong, and you can automate scripting, so that helps. We wrote a Terraform script and ran it."
"MySQL gives us a very user-friendly workspace in which to query the database."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Setup is easy. MySQL of various flavours has community editions to easily test, deploy, and run.​"
"The ML modules in MySQL are advantageous since they make data handling easy and quick at MNQM."
 

Cons

"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."
"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."
"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."
"Improvements are required in character set support, scalability, and big data sets."
"The GUI could improve to make MySQL better."
"While utilizing a comparable algorithm, is noted to be sensitive, especially when configuring the inner device."
"I would like to see some improvements in the solution’s integration aspects."
"The manuals or documentation could be better."
"Sometimes, I get lost in the toggles and buttons, and a better visual design would be nice. The layout is not user-friendly or efficient."
"Could use some additional JSON query support in the solution."
"It isn't as reliable as an SQL Server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"MySQL is a cheap solution."
"There is no cost involved, no licensing fees."
"The price of the solution is good because we have a good partner."
"I am using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"We've never bought a commercial license. We just use the open-source community edition."
"It's cheaper than other solutions."
"It is open-source."
"We are using the licensed version of MySQL."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?
MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...
Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?
I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...
What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?
One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Milvus vs. MySQL and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.