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Milvus vs PostgreSQL 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
8th
Ranking in Vector Databases
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Ranking in Vector Databases
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 5.5%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 16.6%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PostgreSQL16.6%
Milvus5.5%
Other77.9%
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.
PavithrarajShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced
I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

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."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"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."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"The performance is good."
"We often use PostgreSQL for operations monitoring because we are a manufacturing company."
"One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads."
"It is easy to use."
"The solution is scalable, it is very good."
"It's quite scalable."
"The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve the query, documentation, and JSON data functionality."
"There could be a plugin to distribute the data on servers for the product."
"As PostgreSQL is an open-source product, you do have to do a bit more configuration and management yourself."
"The price could be better."
"We often find the solution's datetime datatype challenging."
"It is possible that in the newer version this has been addressed, but I would like the deployment in microservices architecture could be improved."
"The user interface could be a bit better."
"It needs more integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."
"It is free. There is no license on it."
"The solution requires a license."
"Affordable solution."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."
"It is also open-source so it is free."
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872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise45
 

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...
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 PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Milvus vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.