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Faiss vs MariaDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (13th)
MariaDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB is 5.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MariaDB5.6%
Faiss3.0%
Other91.4%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Kalindu Sekarage - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer
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.
AB
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
Has supported web application data needs but requires design adjustments to manage complex queries efficiently
Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues. For small and medium-size volume, it is pretty good. If it goes beyond certain data and complex queries, we see performance issues. We tried the advanced replication feature between different regions, replicating data specifically residing on MariaDB to two different regions of MariaDB data, and there were some technical snags in terms of slowness and longer processing time. Point-in-time recovery in MariaDB is good for small databases. When data volume increases beyond 5 GB or 10 GB per day or runs into double-digit GBs, we found some performance issues. For data below 10 GB, it works fine. Performance is the primary focus area for MariaDB, particularly during transactions or complex query jobs where slow performance is observed. MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

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."
"What I like best about MariaDB is that it is open-source and reliable."
"It's easy to set up."
"MariaDB is a fast and flexible tool."
"MariaDB performs well as the backend database for our cloud-based telephony solution."
"The solution's features have effectively met our operational requirements as a standard SQL database."
"For non-production purposes. I'm just using it for my personal project, so it works quite well. I haven't faced any errors yet."
"The solution runs very quickly. It's not slow at all."
"The product is easy to use and not hard to learn, therefore, when someone asks me for a good DB to use, then I tell them about MariaDB."
 

Cons

"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"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."
"The GUI could be improved a bit. The user interface needs to be improved."
"Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues."
"The stability could always continue to be improved upon."
"Could have more integration with user platforms."
"It would be good if they can maybe improve the mass import in the database. Currently, for importing a large number of data, we create a CSV file and upload all the things in the system. The system does not activate them by default. We have to do this manually. This may be due to the version we are using, but this is something we would like to see improved."
"The configuration could be improved. It should be easier."
"Data continuity could be improved."
"A well-known issue for a lot of different users is associated with write-intensive applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source tool."
"We pay for a yearly license."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4000.00 per year and the licensing is based on the software and the number of posts that you make."
"This is an open-source product, which can be used free of charge."
"We use the solution's free version."
"This is an open source solution with no licensing fees."
"MariaDB is open-source and self-hosted."
"It's an open-source solution."
"MariaDB is a free-to-use solution."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for Faiss?
My main use case for FAISS is in a retrieval-augmented generation project using it with OpenAI, where we use FAISS to store our embeddings created by the Colbert model and for retrieval as well. In...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data. The cost depends on the volume of data and different features enabled during configuration, such as backup ...
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The key area where MariaDB could be improved is its native GUI tooling; while the command-line interface works perfectly fine, the built-in visual tools for administration, management, and query de...
What is your primary use case for MariaDB?
My main use case for MariaDB was web applications, and I have been using MariaDB for just about a year now as I was in the development team. A specific web application where I used MariaDB is a hea...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Facebook 2. Airbnb 3. Pinterest 4. Twitter 5. Microsoft 6. Uber 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Spotify 10. Adobe 11. eBay 12. Dropbox 13. Yelp 14. Salesforce 15. IBM 16. Intel 17. Nvidia 18. Qualcomm 19. Samsung 20. Sony 21. Tencent 22. Alibaba 23. Baidu 24. JD.com 25. Rakuten 26. Zillow 27. Booking.com 28. Expedia 29. TripAdvisor 30. Rakuten 31. Rakuten Viber 32. Rakuten Ichiba
Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. MariaDB and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.