Zilliz
Officially listedAn enterprise-grade vector lakehouse platform for billion-scale AI search and RAG applications.
Zilliz
Zilliz Cloud is an enterprise-grade fully managed service built by the original team behind the open-source vector database Milvus (43,000+ GitHub stars). In May 2026 it evolved into a Vector Lakebase platform, supporting 100 billion+ vector entities and designed for production-grade AI applications.
Core Capabilities
- Extreme performance: The proprietary Cardinal engine delivers sub-10ms latency, query throughput 10x faster than open-source alternatives, and QPS up to 10,000+
- Full-spectrum search: Unified vector search, full-text search (BM25 is 4x faster than Elasticsearch), JSON filtering, geospatial queries, and hybrid retrieval
- Lakehouse architecture: Zero-copy access to your S3 data (supports Iceberg, Lance, Parquet), no ETL required, with separated storage and compute
- Cost optimization: A tiered storage architecture cuts storage costs by 87% ($0.04/GB/month), and on-demand compute avoids idle resources
- Enterprise compliance: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and HIPAA certified, with CMEK, VPC peering, and private endpoints
- Open-source DNA: Based on Apache 2.0-licensed Milvus, supports BYOC deployment with no vendor lock-in
Use Cases AI engineers building production-grade RAG systems, recommendation engines, image/video retrieval, and multimodal search; enterprises processing hundreds of millions of vectors or more; regulated industries (healthcare, finance) needing enterprise compliance; and teams migrating from other vector databases that hit cost or scale bottlenecks.
Unique Advantages The proprietary Cardinal engine is the core differentiating technology, outperforming comparable products. AWS Advanced Technology Partner certification and a G2 double crown (highest performance + easiest to use). JSON Shredding technology delivers 10x filtering performance — a key reason Reddit chose Milvus over Qdrant. Prices were sharply reduced in 2026, with a 10TB dataset's monthly cost dropping from $3,000 to $400.
Editor's Review Zilliz represents the enterprise benchmark for vector databases. For teams that need to process large-scale vectors (hundreds of millions and up) and demand extreme performance and enterprise compliance, this is the first-choice option. Users report search times dropping from 8 seconds to under 1 second, with a G2 rating of 4.7/5 (92% 5-star). But scenarios with fewer than 50 million vectors may find it overkill, and the learning curve is relatively steep. If your AI application is moving from prototype to production, this is an infrastructure choice worth deep evaluation.
Pricing
### 💰 定价模式：免费增值（按需付费） **起步价**：免费（5GB存储 + 250万vCUs/月） #### 主要方案 - **Free**：$0/月 - 5GB存储，250万vCUs，最多5个集合 - **Standard Serverless**：$0/月起 - 按需付费，适合原型测试 - **Enterprise Dedicated**：$197/月起 - 99.95% SLA，企业级支持 - **Business Critical**：定制报价 - HIPAA合规，全球集群，CMEK加密 - **On-demand Compute**：按查询付费 - 零拷贝数据湖搜索，无需预留资源 #### 集群类型（每百万向量/月） - **性能优化型**：$63起（10ms延迟，500-1500 QPS） - **容量优化型**：$16起（50-100ms延迟，100-300 QPS） - **分层存储型**：$5起（100-1000ms延迟，10-50 QPS） #### 试用/其他信息 2026年1月存储价格从$0.30/GB降至$0.04/GB，降幅87%。免费层无需信用卡，可直接体验完整功能。 — Visit website
FAQ
Is Zilliz free?
It offers a free tier with 5GB of storage and 2.5 million vCUs/month, up to 5 collections, letting you experience the full features without a credit card. Paid plans start at $197/month (Enterprise).
What are Zilliz's main features?
Core features include processing 100 billion+ vectors, sub-10ms latency vector search, full-text search (BM25), hybrid retrieval, zero-copy data lake search, GPU-accelerated indexing, tiered storage, and enterprise compliance (SOC 2/HIPAA).
How does Zilliz differ from Pinecone?
Zilliz's Cardinal engine is 10x faster with about 70% lower TCO at large scale, supports BYOC deployment with no vendor lock-in, and offers GPU acceleration. Pinecone is better suited to small teams that want the simplest experience.
What scale of vector data is Zilliz suitable for?
It is best for production environments with hundreds of millions of vectors or more, scaling to 100 billion+ vectors. Scenarios with fewer than 50 million vectors may find it overkill; lighter options like pgvector or Chroma are recommended.
Which deployment modes does Zilliz support?
It supports three modes — Serverless (pay as you go), Dedicated (dedicated clusters), and BYOC (deployed in your own VPC) — covering AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure across multiple clouds and regions.
What is Zilliz's Cardinal engine?
It is Zilliz's proprietary search engine, delivering 10x the query throughput of open-source Milvus, 3x the index building speed, and sub-10ms P50 latency — its core technical differentiator.
How does Zilliz integrate with LangChain?
Through the langchain-milvus package it integrates seamlessly, supporting vector stores and hybrid search; just configure the cluster endpoint and API key, with full support for RAG workflows.
What are Zilliz's storage costs?
After the January 2026 price cut, storage costs $0.04/GB/month (an 87% reduction). A 10TB dataset's monthly storage cost dropped from $3,000 to $400 — a significant cost improvement.