Milvus
Billion-scale vector search
Elasticsearch: Vector Databases
Founded 2012|Amsterdam, Netherlands / San Francisco, CA|3001-5000 employees
What is Elasticsearch?
Elasticsearch is the world's most widely deployed, open-source vector database, operated by Elastic N.V. (NYSE: ESTC). Vector search is integrated into the widely used Elasticsearch search and analytics engine, leveraging the mature ELK stack ecosystem and offering powerful filtering, aggregation, and combined keyword + vector (hybrid) search capabilities. Founded in 2012 in Amsterdam, Elastic provides a platform for enterprise search, observability, and security use cases. Recent innovations include DiskBBQ, a new disk-friendly vector search algorithm that delivers more efficient vector search at scale and eliminates the need to keep entire vector indexes in memory. Elasticsearch's pricing model is consumption-based, charging only for the compute, storage, and data transfer actually used across three deployment tiers: Standard, Platinum, and Enterprise. With over 470 customers using Elastic for AI (including 410+ using it as a vector database), Elasticsearch has proven capabilities at massive scale.
Strengths and tradeoffs
What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.
Pros
- Most widely deployed open-source vector database with massive community
- Mature ELK stack ecosystem with extensive integrations and tools
- DiskBBQ algorithm enables efficient vector search without full in-memory indexes
- Powerful hybrid search combining keyword, filters, and vector similarity
- Consumption-based pricing—pay only for what you use
Cons
- Can be complex to configure and optimize for vector search
- Not purpose-built for vector search—added as a feature
- Resource-intensive at scale without proper optimization
- Pricing model complexity with multiple tiers and factors
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Try Respan freeBest Elasticsearch alternatives & competitors
Top companies in Vector Databases you can use instead of Elasticsearch.
Pinecone
Fully managed serverless vector database
Qdrant
High-performance open-source vector search
Chroma
Lightweight embedded vector database
Supabase
pgvector hosting
Weaviate
Open-source vector database
Neo4j
Native graph database with Cypher query language
MongoDB Atlas Vector Search
Redis Vector
ClickHouse
Analytics + vector
TigerGraph
Neon
Serverless Postgres
Vespa
LanceDB
Turbopuffer
SingleStore
ArangoDB
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