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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 (6th)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (3rd)
 

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 MySQL is 10.8%, down from 17.5% 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.
Muzzamil  Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Native encryption ensures secure data management with a simple deployment
The most valuable feature is the on-premises data encryption facilities. By default, we can provide encryption, and this feature in MySQL is why we prefer it over other databases. The native encryption in MySQL encourages us to use this database model more frequently compared to Oracle and other databases. With Oracle, we have to buy another solution for encryption and masking, but MySQL supports native encryption, which enhances our return on investment. It perfectly supports our ROI, and we have no issues with its functionality.

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."
"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."
"I like the accuracy and usability."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."
"Like other databases, it has a rich set of functions, such as stored procedures and its own procedural language, which is akin to Oracle SQL. It also has trigger and cursor commands you would expect with a good database language."
"What I really like about MySQL is the opportunity to search for information and organize it any way I like."
"I like the JSON stuff."
"While MySQL offers strong basic functionality."
"MySQL's clustering features are very strong, and you can automate scripting, so that helps. We wrote a Terraform script and ran it."
"The initial setup is easy."
"MySQL is an open-source product and has good community support. If you encounter any problem, you can easily ask other members of the community to help. They help you a lot. On top of being free, MySQL is a cross-platform database, meaning it can work on both Windows and Linux. It is very good for us."
"It has a community version. When I have to create a new database, I have no problems with licenses."
 

Cons

"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"Its performance should be better. When we use big data, it is slow in performance. We should be able to use mirroring for improved performance."
"I would like to see more integrations of the solution with other platforms and improve the support on different data types."
"​MySQL needs improvements on its diagnostic features.​"
"It could be more secure."
"Clusters are hard to perform so we use no SQL alternates like MongoDB."
"We want to continue using MySQL but it merged with Oracle and the scalage changed."
"It isn't as reliable as an SQL Server."
"We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability. These are some of the critical features that we use and look for in a product. It should be easier to manage clusters. Scalability is very important for us because our projects and concurrency requirements are quite big. We also require high availability of the server, application, and other things. It should also have more performance-based features or enhancements from the performance point of view. When we divide a database, it should be able to handle the queries very fast."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"When you know the setup will continue to grow, make sure you have the paid support."
"The pricing falls within the moderate range."
"We are using the free community edition of MySQL."
"There is a licensing cost because we are going for a proprietary product. There are some other versions for which there is no licensing cost."
"MySQL is very cheap. It could be free. It also has a yearly licensing option."
"​Enterprise editions and support are definitely needed for the heavy users who need direct support. ​"
"MySQL is a cheap solution."
"I use the open-source free community version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
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...
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: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.