Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Milvus vs MySQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (7th)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Milvus is 5.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 13.8%, down from 20.7% 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.
Naresh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lightweight and is available at a friendly price
In terms of our organization's data management strategy, especially if I talk about PLM software, which is about data management and can be regarded as the core data management of the products that we make. When we are designing something, specifically a new product, it is a critical area, especially considering that I am in the energy sector. In the energy sector, when we are building huge turbines and other things, the data might have intellectual property aspects attached to it. Even within the company, one region cannot see other regions to the extent to which the product offers security. In my company, we use PDM and PLM from Teamcenter effectively. MySQL is not a tool my company uses in production. When we create some small demos, we use MySQL. For production, we would use only Oracle because it is the most stable tool in the market. When we install Teamcenter, we don't need to touch the database. We just need to make some references to figure out this is the database, and it automatically creates everything. The basic thing about PDM and PLM systems is that the user should never touch the database because people may corrupt the data model or do anything that will have a very bad impact on the system. Database modifications only have to be made to the PLM system. We are not supposed to interact with the database directly. The tool is very lightweight, less expensive, and sometimes it is free. It is a very usable tool that is preferred by a lot of people. Only for production use, I may ask people not to use it. Integration of MySQL is like how we don't directly integrate PLM with Oracle. We have to use PLM's APIs to talk to the database. As a part of the best practices, we should not directly integrate anything with the PLM database. Feature-wise, the integration capabilities of the product are easy to use. It is like any other tool where if there is a table, there is a property. If you want to map a property using any middleware, then we can easily do that. I recommend the product to others. For medium-sized companies, MySQL is one of the best solutions. Medium-sized companies can choose not to go for Oracle, which is very expensive. In terms of the value or benefits derived by our company from the use of the product, I would say that it is not very expensive and provides performance along with scalability. The product can cater to the needs of customers ranging from 2,00,000 to 6,00,000 to 10,00,000 records. Even 20,00,000 records are fine, but after that, users may get into trouble. It is the best tool for mid-sized companies with a reasonable amount of data. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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."
"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."
"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."
"It has a lot of features. The RDBMS, consistency, and multi-user features are valuable."
"MySQL's most significant attribute is its capability to create, modify, and maintain databases. This is crucial and advantageous in procedures, such as SOAR. Therefore, all SQL functions are beneficial to any backend developer or developer who requires data storage."
"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten since it has been running flawlessly."
"It was easy to install."
"SKIP LOCKED is a valuable feature."
"The fact that it is free is what appeals to me the most."
"The relations in the database, the dynamic workflow, and the ability to connect with all columns. It's useful for e-commerce."
"I like MySQL's feature that helps to automate things."
 

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."
"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."
"Even for the best database, we always want the database to perform much better, so we wish MySQL would be much better, in terms of performance."
"Integration is a key feature in need of improvement."
"The performance, stability, and security are areas with shortcomings in MySQL, where improvements are required."
"The interface could be improved."
"If it had something similar to Microsoft’s DTS engine then it would be the best database system out there."
"As for areas that could be improved, the tool is often used as a local database on laptops. But now, we're moving to cloud-based solutions that are more scalable and highly available. I think the tool should offer a cloud database option. This would let users keep a local copy of data if needed, but also have their data available across different regions through a cloud account."
"In MySQL, we need to define every table beforehand."
"The licensing of the solution is on the expensive side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"Milvus is an open-source solution."
"MySQL is a cheap solution."
"We are using the free community version of the solution."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten. The solution is not cheap but it’s a fair value. The pricing depends on the use cases of our customers. Some of our customers use the community edition which is license free and a good fit for their use cases. However, we encourage our bigger customers to sign up because of the scalability issues. The paid versions get direct technical support from Oracle."
"The solution’s pricing depends on customer requirements. A license is not required for the community edition."
"I don't pay for a license."
"We are using the free version of MySQL. We prefer paying for a yearly license."
"We're using the open-source version right now, which is free. I do see some value in some of the more enterprise functions. We're using the open-source version right now, and I was interested in the MySQL Enterprise version really for the tools that they provide, but we decided not to make the purchase."
"The pricing is not much expensive, it's cheap."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

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

 

Learn More

Video not available
 

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: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.