Zilliz Cloud vs turbopuffer

Zilliz Cloud8.9Visit turbopuffer8.6Visit

Higher score Zilliz Cloud #5 in Vector Database Hosting 8.9/10 Free plan · 30-day trial Free planFree trial✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Zilliz Cloud

vs

turbopuffer #8 in Vector Database Hosting 8.6/10 Paid ✓ 2 of 3 features Visit turbopuffer

• Zilliz Cloud fits best

  Managed Milvus-compatible deployments

• turbopuffer fits best

  High-scale managed vector workloads

Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. Bought places stand at the number bought; this page and our disclosure say so. Paying vendors may get a fuller, more detailed review from our editors, and that review can change their score. How we rank.

Side by side

Feature	Zilliz Cloud 8.9/10 Visit ↗	turbopuffer 8.6/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	8.9	8.6
Ranking	#5 in Vector Database Hosting	#8 in Vector Database Hosting
Best for	Managed Milvus-compatible deployments	High-scale managed vector workloads
Pricing model	Free plan + paid	Paid
Starting price	—	$16/mo
Free plan	✓ (best)	—
Free trial	30 days	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud, Self-hosted
Platforms	Web	Web
Support	Docs	Email, Community, Docs · 24/7
Compliance	SSO/SAML, 2FA, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, SSO/SAML
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Zilliz Cloud 2/3 · turbopuffer 2/3
Hybrid search	✓	✓
Metadata filtering	✓	✓
Serverless scaling	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Included storage	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Deployment regions	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Maximum dimensions	32768 dimensions (best)	10752 dimensions
Our review
Pros	Hybrid, sparse, BM25, and full-text search in one service Free tier includes 5 GB storage and up to 5 collections SaaS and BYOC deployment options with backup and migration tools	Combines dense, sparse, BM25, and hybrid search Supports exact filtered kNN and metadata filtering Offers branching, sharding, embedding, and BYOC deployment
Cons	Paid pricing uses variable operation or compute charges Deployment is cloud-focused rather than self-hosted Not open source, which limits platform ownership options	There is no free plan Launch uses a $16 monthly minimum usage commitment Enterprise pricing starts at >=$4,096/month plus a 35% usage premium
Our verdict	Zilliz Cloud is a fully managed Milvus service for teams building and operating vector search applications. It provides cloud-hosted clusters for semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation, recommendations, and multimodal retrieval.… Read the review →	turbopuffer is a hosted search database for AI applications, semantic search, recommendations, and other retrieval workloads. It combines dense and sparse vector search with full-text BM25 search, metadata filtering, branching, and… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Zilliz Cloud — where it wins

  • Hybrid, sparse, BM25, and full-text search in one service
  • Free tier includes 5 GB storage and up to 5 collections
  • SaaS and BYOC deployment options with backup and migration tools

  Where it doesn't

  • Paid pricing uses variable operation or compute charges
  • Deployment is cloud-focused rather than self-hosted
  • Not open source, which limits platform ownership options

• turbopuffer — where it wins

  • Combines dense, sparse, BM25, and hybrid search
  • Supports exact filtered kNN and metadata filtering
  • Offers branching, sharding, embedding, and BYOC deployment

  Where it doesn't

  • There is no free plan
  • Launch uses a $16 monthly minimum usage commitment
  • Enterprise pricing starts at >=$4,096/month plus a 35% usage premium

• Zilliz Cloud8.9/10 · Free plan · 30-day trial

  A capable managed Milvus service with a free tier and usage-based paid plans.

  Visit Zilliz CloudFull verdict →
• turbopuffer8.6/10 · Paid

  A broad managed search database for high-scale AI retrieval workloads.

  Visit turbopufferFull verdict →