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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
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (13th)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 5.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 9.0%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
MySQL9.0%
Milvus5.3%
Other85.7%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale - PeerSpot reviewer
Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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.
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

"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."
"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 has good accuracy and performance."
"The solution helps us perform with our databases and extract data."
"One of the most valuable features is MySQL's ability to run our email system. We use a system called Colab."
"The solution is a small application and is very easy to deploy."
"Compared to other databases, MySQL is cheaper and we were using the community edition which was free of cost. ML is fully integrated with the database in HeatWave. It has also many other features. MySQL is a far better solution in terms of pricing."
"It has a community version. When I have to create a new database, I have no problems with licenses."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of MySQL is its reliability and performance."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I would have worked with our IT team in terms of the initial setup."
 

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."
"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."
"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"We face certain integration issues, especially when we integrate the database with security solutions like IBM QRadar, which affects database performance."
"The analytics features are in need of improvement."
"The GUI could improve to make MySQL better."
"The technical support should be more knowledgeable and available worldwide."
"The solution is expensive."
"They should come up with a better solution than the NDB cluster for better scaling. If they could come up with a better solution for write scaling, apart from the NDB cluster, which is supported by all open source communities, that would be great. Although the NDB cluster, I believe, is an open-source tool, it's not widely supported as a solution."
"I am looking for the Temporal SQL feature, which basically means that there is complete history for each table. This feature is currently available in MariaDB. PostgreSQL has something called a foreign-data wrapper, which is another way to access external data from inside. MySQL could have a similar feature."
"Rather than going in-depth about the technical features, which a technical person can directly tell, I would say that MySQL should be able to adapt to the next framework. The 5G framework means an unstructured framework. So if MySQL becomes smoother and more adaptable, it'll be easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"It's an open-source database management system that can be used free of charge."
"We are using the licensed version of MySQL."
"We are using the free community version of the solution."
"For the on-premise version, no license is required."
"When you know the setup will continue to grow, make sure you have the paid support."
"MySQL is a cheap solution."
"Can range from free to quite expensive, depending on the environments and requirements, so better to really set goals ahead of setting it up."
"The solution does not come with a licensing fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise62
 

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.