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Milvus vs MongoDB 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
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (6th)
MongoDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (1st), Managed NoSQL Databases (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 5.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MongoDB is 4.2%, up from 3.7% 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.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms data flow with adaptable schema and smooth public cloud deployment
One of our business units uses MongoDB, and we developed an ETL pipeline that extracts data from MongoDB and transfers it into our data warehouse MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is similar to a document database. It offers flexibility in schema adaptation, allowing us to change the schema and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the accuracy and usability."
"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 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."
"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."
"MongoDB is simpler to learn and implement than traditional SQL solutions like MySQL."
"MongoDB is extremely developer-friendly because when you are starting, there is very little time needed upfront in terms of planning."
"It is easy to set up."
"One of the most valuable features of MongoDB is it is Its open source."
"Its flexibility, and cost. It is reasonably priced."
"The integration capabilities of MongoDB are fine for the solutions that we use in our company."
"I like the schemaless architecture that it follows. I also like the sharding that it provides."
"MongoDB has many good replication features and good performance."
 

Cons

"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."
"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."
"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."
"They could provide more documentation and examples for adding pipeline stages."
"The scalability of the solution has room for improvement."
"I rate the support from MongoDB a four out of five."
"Some of the solution's transaction capabilities can be improved."
"There should be better integration with other databases."
"MongoDB should incorporate more features, particularly search functionality, and real-time communication capabilities, to improve the database and provide data listening services. Currently, we rely on the Atlas offering, but it would be fantastic if MongoDB could develop a new solution or updated version that includes these features within its internal database and driver. However, I am uncertain if this would be a viable or profitable move for them, and I am speaking from a mobile-centric viewpoint."
"MongoDB is a very useful and convenient choice, but sometimes for more complex projects, there are certain niche requirements that appear, so using a different tool could be beneficial. It raises the complexity of the architecture, but it could be beneficial to the world, the features, the ease of the features which are being implemented."
"I have found the solution difficult to operate as an administrator."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"I chose MongoDB because it is cost-effective compared to Oracle, which can be expensive. In addition, MongoDB has good performance and has not caused any issues while working with it. It has been a good choice for me."
"If you want support with the solution you will need to purchase a license and not use the open-source version. The license is a little expensive."
"You only have to pay for the paid version, not the open-source version."
"Our customers pay for yearly licenses for MongoDB."
"I'm using the free version of MongoDB."
"We use the open-source version, which is available to use free of charge."
"We are using the Community Edition of MongoDB."
"The pricing is favorable if you opt to install MongoDB on an Amazon EC2 instance as you won't have to pay for the extra Atlas services and can instead manage the scaling yourself. This allows for a cost-effective solution and using MongoDB on a small scale, I have been able to utilize it for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
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...
What do you like most about MongoDB?
MongoDB's approach to handling data in documents rather than traditional tables has been particularly beneficial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MongoDB?
We use the free version of MongoDB, so there are no licensing costs.
What needs improvement with MongoDB?
There is room for improvement in integrating MongoDB with agentive AI solutions. While solutions for other databases like SQL or PostgreSQL ( /products/postgresql-reviews ) already exist, MongoDB r...
 

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. MongoDB and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.