At a glance — Oct 2026
Updated 2026-10-27 · forward this page: /jtbds/billion-scale-vector#briefScores as of 2026-09-14 (43 days old; Depot marks scores stale after 30 days). The pick is still Depot's current editorial pick; it has not been re-reviewed since. Prices below carry their own dates.
- Depot Pick
- Zilliz (Milvus) · 8.10/10 for this job (curated estimate, high confidence)
capability scale + maturity.
- Runner-up
- Qdrant · 8.57/10
Scores higher than the pick on: Price / performance, Latency / reliability, Developer & agent DX, Privacy / data retention, Lock-in risk (higher = worse).
- When not to use the pick
- Under ~50–100M vectors — don't pay the complexity tax.
- Lock-in / migration
- Runner-up Qdrant has lower stored lock-in risk (3 vs 3.5, 0–10, higher = more lock-in). Pick exit signals: open source (provider tag `oss`). Self-host fallback listed for this job: Milvus.
- Sourced price (no comparable unit)
Pick: no sourced price in this job's unit (no_sourced_price).
No cheapest SKU (no_comparable_unit_for_job). No price was invented.
- Free option
- Milvus (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25
- Failure modes to watch
- Stale retrieval: Store the source URL and the time it was fetched. If a newer canonical page exists, or two stored sources disagree, do not answer from the older one.
Cite: Agent Provider Depot, Depot Pick for billion-scale-vector: zilliz, scores as of 2026-09-14. Agents: GET /api/decide?jtbd=billion-scale-vector
Free Billion-scale vector search options
Zilliz (Milvus)
capability scale + maturity.
Pricing (directional): Managed Milvus (Zilliz Cloud); open-source Milvus for self-host; designed for large-scale ANN.
Lock-in risk: higher = more lock-in (worse). Overall already inverts this dimension.
When you're truly at massive scale, Milvus/Zilliz earns its complexity. Don't start here for a chatbot MVP.
Quote for Billion-scale vector search
Depot Pick stays Zilliz (Milvus). Prices below are sourced SKU rows only (as of 2026-10-27). Input and output are not blended. GET /api/quote?jtbd=billion-scale-vector
Nothing was compared. no comparable sourced unit for this job; chat input $/1M and other units were not borrowed pickIsPriceWinner is null.
Sourced price unavailable for the Depot Pick. No row in the pricing index.
5 of 5 candidates have no sourced price row. 5 are excluded from the Matching price comparison (none). no comparable sourced unit for this job; chat input $/1M and other units were not borrowed
Runners-up
Qdrant
Depot pick for serious vector workloads with filters. Self-host or Cloud — either way you can leave.
Pinecone
Still the zero-ops vector default. If you already run Postgres, try pgvector before paying Pinecone rents.
Turbopuffer
When your vector bill scares you and much of the corpus is cold, Turbopuffer is the interesting answer.
When NOT to use the top pick
Under ~50–100M vectors — don't pay the complexity tax.
Full ranking (score table)
Ranked with this JTBD's weights. Scores are curated estimates unless marked otherwise. Agents: prefer /api/decide then this table for tie-breaks.
| # | Provider | Overall | Fit | $/perf | Latency | DX | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Qdrant | 8.6 | 9.2 | 8.8 | 8.6 | 8.4 | 2026-10-19 |
| 2 | Turbopuffer | 8.2 | 8.6 | 9.4 | 8.2 | 8.5 | 2026-09-14 |
| 3 | Zilliz (Milvus)Depot Pick | 8.1 | 9.2 | 7.8 | 8.4 | 7.2 | 2026-09-14 |
| 4 | Pinecone | 7.9 | 9.0 | 6.2 | 9.0 | 8.8 | 2026-09-14 |
| 5 | DataStax Astra DB | 7.9 | 8.4 | 7.4 | 8.8 | 7.6 | 2026-09-14 |
Score methodology for this job
capability scale + maturity.
capabilityFit: 24%pricePerformance: 18%latencyReliability: 18%developerDx: 16%privacyPosture: 10%lockInRisk: 8%maturity: 6%