Weaviate vs Qdrant

Weaviate8.7Visit Qdrant8.5Visit

Higher score Weaviate #3 in Ai Databases 8.7/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Weaviate

vs

Qdrant #5 in Ai Databases 8.5/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Qdrant

• Weaviate fits best

  Teams needing cloud or self-hosted vector search

• Qdrant fits best

  Teams needing cloud or self-hosted vector search

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Side by side

Feature	Weaviate 8.7/10 Visit ↗	Qdrant 8.5/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	8.7	8.5
Ranking	#3 in Ai Databases	#5 in Ai Databases
Best for	Teams needing cloud or self-hosted vector search	Teams needing cloud or self-hosted vector search
Pricing model	Free plan + paid	Free plan + paid
Starting price	$45/mo	—
Free plan	✓	✓
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud, Self-hosted	Cloud, Self-hosted
Platforms	Web	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux
Support	Email, Phone, Community, Docs · 24/7	Email, Tickets, Community, Docs
Compliance	SOC 2, HIPAA, SSO/SAML	SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Weaviate 2/3 · Qdrant 2/3
Metadata filtering	✓	✓
Hybrid search	✓	✓
Managed backups	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Deployment	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Index types	HNSW, Flat, Dynamic, HFresh	HNSW; sparse vector index; payload index; filterable HNSW
Max vector dimensions	Not checked yet	65535
Our review
Pros	Hybrid vector and BM25 keyword search with metadata filtering Cloud and self-hosted deployment with multiple index types REST, GraphQL, gRPC APIs and five official client-language options	Supports dense, sparse, and hybrid vector search with metadata filtering Offers open-source self-hosting and managed cloud deployment Includes a free tier with cloud inference for selected models
Cons	Free plan is limited to 100,000 objects and 1 GB memory Flex starts at $45 per month with a shared cloud cluster Premium requires a $400 monthly prepaid contract	The free tier is limited to a single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM Standard pricing is usage-based rather than a fixed published amount Higher availability and SSO are reserved for paid tiers
Our verdict	Weaviate is an open-source vector database for developers building semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation, recommendations, and other AI applications. It stores objects with vector embeddings and supports vector similarity,… Read the review →	Qdrant is an open-source vector search engine and database for semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation, recommendations, and other AI applications. It suits teams that need to store vector representations alongside metadata and… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Weaviate — where it wins

  • Hybrid vector and BM25 keyword search with metadata filtering
  • Cloud and self-hosted deployment with multiple index types
  • REST, GraphQL, gRPC APIs and five official client-language options

  Where it doesn't

  • Free plan is limited to 100,000 objects and 1 GB memory
  • Flex starts at $45 per month with a shared cloud cluster
  • Premium requires a $400 monthly prepaid contract

• Qdrant — where it wins

  • Supports dense, sparse, and hybrid vector search with metadata filtering
  • Offers open-source self-hosting and managed cloud deployment
  • Includes a free tier with cloud inference for selected models

  Where it doesn't

  • The free tier is limited to a single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM
  • Standard pricing is usage-based rather than a fixed published amount
  • Higher availability and SSO are reserved for paid tiers

• Weaviate8.7/10 · Free plan

  A flexible vector database with hybrid search, multiple APIs, and cloud or self-hosted deployment.

  Visit WeaviateFull verdict →
• Qdrant8.5/10 · Free plan

  A flexible vector database for teams building semantic search and AI retrieval.

  Visit QdrantFull verdict →