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Faiss 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

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)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

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 MySQL is 12.3%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MySQL12.3%
Faiss3.0%
Other84.7%
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.
Prabir Kumar Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd
Offers robust security and availability with impressive replication capabilities
Regarding their documentation and interface, there is room for improvement. Documentation is definitely required when running multiple databases on a cluster system. The load balancer, MySQL LB, which is used to connect to the application, lacks clear documentation. When there are multiple application servers connecting to the MySQL cluster and going through the MySQL load balancer, the documentation is not user-friendly. It's there, but only technical persons with deep knowledge of the MySQL database can implement it. Most of the community users or ISVs who use MySQL don't have many technical persons or DBA experts, so they face some challenges for the high availability of connecting high available databases from high available applications. That documentation should be simplified.

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 availability of resources for MySQL has been the biggest benefit for our organization."
"MySQL is easy to use, has fast performance, and it is comfortable for end-user to use."
"It is a stable, reliable, and powerful solution that is quite suited for small to medium organizations and/or projects."
"As long as your application supports it well, and you are familiar with the scaling options and its limitations, you can’t go very wrong with MySQL, as it is a very mature product by now."
"Yes, MySQL has improved numerous processes; it has given us the ability to create applications without absorbing major costs."
"Offers high performance due to its unique storage engine architecture as well as it's core written in powerful languages such as C and C++."
"Installation, because in a few seconds, the product was up and running."
"SKIP LOCKED is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"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."
"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"If you want to scale it you will require more knowledge on the product and you will need more support for it."
"It could be more secure."
"Integration is a key feature in need of improvement, as we have spent hours building this just to ensure that a set of data is exposed to a different client, a different world in need of that data."
"MySQL's performance needs to be improved for enterprise-level applications compared to Oracle and Postgres."
"In MySQL, we need to define every table beforehand."
"I would like to see some improvements in the solution’s integration aspects."
"MySQL could be improved by adding more automation."
"Sometimes, although your server is configured properly, you might experience a slow performance, especially on a shared hosting server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"There is not a license required for this solution."
"For the on-premise version, no license is required."
"We are using the free community version of the solution."
"There is a license needed for this solution."
"MySQL Enterprise Support is not cheap, though might still be cheaper than Oracle or SQL Server. They may not have local support depending on where you’re based, but there are many smaller agencies out there that will readily provide support. You’ll need to spend some time looking around."
"MySQL is released under an open-source license, so you have nothing to pay to use it."
"We've never bought a commercial license. We just use the open-source community edition."
"The solution’s pricing depends on customer requirements. A license is not required for the community edition."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise64
 

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...
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. 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
Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.
Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. MySQL and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.