No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Milvus vs MySQL comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
14th
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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 4.6%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 12.5%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MySQL12.5%
Milvus4.6%
Other82.9%
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.
Amandeep Pawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Airy Software Technologies Private Limited
Careful data design has delivered consistent transactions and supports reliable microservices
MySQL is a reliable and mature relational database, but there are a few areas where it could be improved. One area is horizontal scalability. While MySQL supports scaling for applications, handling write-heavy workloads often requires additional solutions such as sharding, which adds complexity. Another area where it could improve is in native support for advanced analytics and large-scale distributed processing, which may require specialized databases. Changing the database schema on large tables can also be challenging and may require careful planning to minimize downtime. Performance tuning is powerful, but identifying and optimizing slow queries often requires manual analysis and experience. Having more built-in performance insights and automated optimization recommendations would be helpful for administrators. In terms of documentation and security, I think MySQL could be improved in those areas. While the official documentation is comprehensive, it can sometimes be difficult for beginners to navigate, especially for advanced topics such as application partitioning and query optimization. More practical examples and architecture-focused guides would be beneficial. On the integration side, MySQL already works well with frameworks such as Spring Boot and Hibernate, but enhancing support for modern cloud-native deployments, Kubernetes, and automated observability would simplify operations. MySQL is a mature and dependable database, and I hope to see improvements primarily around administration, better operational tooling, and a smoother developer experience rather than fundamental database capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."
"I like the accuracy and usability."
"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."
"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."
"When comparing MySQL to other solutions it is easier to use and boots up faster. Additionally, when you want to query a lot of data, MySQL is better in performance."
"MySQL has improved our internal procedures by providing high performance, ease of use, and cost savings."
"The performance is great, as this is a lightweight product that is not demanding on the resources, which is what I think gives it the edge."
"MySQL is an easy-to-use solution that provides stability, reliability, flexibility, performance, security, and high availability."
"It has a community version, and when I have to create a new database, I have no problems with licenses."
"It has provided a low-cost, high-availability solution without complex active/standby management using Linux HA."
"MySQL is the best option for the Laravel PHP framework."
"Combined with PHPMyAdmin, MySQL is an excellent database solution for small to medium sized businesses or installations."
 

Cons

"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."
"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."
"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."
"It requires a training platform."
"MySQL is missing some RDBMS features like stored procedures, foreign keys, transaction, rollback, and subselect, and it also does not support triggers."
"We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability."
"We want high availability and replication features, which are currently missing in this solution. It would be great if they can provide an in-built replication feature, similar to Oracle RAC, in MySQL."
"Oracle should start putting in some of the enterprise features in the standard feature. There are some key features that should be part of the standard."
"There should be an arrangement for end-users to get trained to use the tool...Improvement-wise, a graphical interface could be added for new users, eliminating the need to memorize the complex syntax."
"It can have better monitoring. In addition, the enterprise manager should be able to cater to more than one virtual machine. Currently, you need one license per server. It seems a bit too much to get one license for one enterprise manager. I hope the enterprise manager for MySQL can accommodate more virtual machines for MySQL."
"When it comes to stability SQL Server is better than MySQL. This is an area they could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"We are using the licensed version of MySQL."
"There is not a license required for this solution."
"​Enterprise editions and support are definitely needed for the heavy users who need direct support. ​"
"It is an open source platform."
"Can range from free to quite expensive, depending on the environments and requirements, so better to really set goals ahead of setting it up."
"We've never bought a commercial license. We just use the open-source community edition."
"I use the open-source free community version."
"MySQL is free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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
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 Milvus vs. MySQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.