Milvus Pricing 2026

Plans, hidden costs, and cheaper alternatives compared

Is Milvus worth the price?

90/10

Milvus offers a very generous pricing model, especially with its robust open-source option and the Zilliz Cloud Free tier providing 5GB storage and 2.5M vCUs/month at no cost.

The Zilliz Serverless tier is competitively priced at $4 per million vCUs, offering flexibility for growing needs. This pricing is best for developers and startups looking for powerful vector database solutions with low entry barriers.

Pricing Plans

30-day Free Trial

Open Source

Free

Self-hosted
Apache 2.0 license
Full control
Community support

Zilliz Cloud Free

Free

5GB storage
2.5M vCUs/month
Managed service
Prototyping

Zilliz Serverless

Pay-as-you-go

$4 per million vCUs
Auto-scaling
Up to 20M vectors
No minimum

Zilliz Dedicated

$99/month

Enterprise-grade
99.95% SLA
SOC 2 & ISO 27001
Custom deployment

Calculate your cost View full pricing

Hidden Costs & Gotchas

Overage fees for vCUs on Serverless tier

Potential egress costs for data transfer

Enterprise features likely require custom quotes

Which Plan Do You Need?

AI/ML developers and researchers

Startups needing scalable vector search

Enterprises requiring dedicated, secure deployments

How Milvus Compares to Competitors

Compared to Pinecone, which has a free tier with limitations and then moves to usage-based pricing, Milvus's Zilliz Cloud Free tier offers a similar entry point. Weaviate also offers self-hosted and managed cloud options, but Milvus's open-source nature and clear serverless pricing at $4 per million vCUs provide strong competitive value.

Milvus Pricing FAQ

How much does Milvus cost?

Milvus starts at $99/month on the Zilliz Dedicated plan. A free plan is also available with limited features.

Does Milvus have a free plan?

Yes. Milvus offers a free plan called "Open Source". It includes: Self-hosted, Apache 2.0 license, Full control.

Does Milvus offer a free trial?

Yes, Milvus offers a free trial lasting 30 days. No credit card is typically required to start the trial, though this may vary.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Milvus?

Yes. Popular alternatives to Milvus include LanceDB, Zilliz, Qdrant, SingleStore. Free alternatives include LanceDB, Zilliz, Qdrant. Compare them side-by-side on Toolradar.