Head to head
Turbopuffer vs Zilliz Cloud (Milvus)
As a vector database API, Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) rates higher on the APIbenchmarks Index, 85.4 to 67.7, a 17.7-point gap. Here is how they compare on each criterion.
Criterion by criterion
| Criterion | Turbopuffer | Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation & DX | ||
| Reliability | ||
| Ecosystem & SDKs | ||
| Accessibility | ||
| APIbenchmarks Index | 67.7 | 85.4 |
Specifications
| Turbopuffer | Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Cheap serverless search on object storage | Managed Milvus at billion-vector scale |
| Free tier | No | 5GB storage + compute credits, permanent free tier |
| Pricing | Per GB queried/written + storage | Per compute-unit-hour + storage |
| Official SDKs | 6 languages | 9 languages |
Is Turbopuffer better than Zilliz Cloud (Milvus)?
On the APIbenchmarks Index, Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) rates higher (85.4 vs 67.7). It leads on the four weighted criteria, but price is reported separately, so the best choice still depends on your budget.
Verdict in one line
Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) leads by 17.7 points (85.4 vs 67.7) and wins 4 of 4 criteria.
Winner by criterion
| Criterion | Winner | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Documentation & DX | 74 | 82 | |
| Reliability | 76 | 88 | |
| Ecosystem & SDKs | 58 | 85 | |
| Accessibility | 60 | 88 |
Choose Turbopuffer if… / choose Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) if…
- →your use case matches its focus: cheap serverless search on object storage
- →documentation & dx matters most to you (82 vs 74)
- →reliability matters most to you (88 vs 76)
- →ecosystem & sdks matters most to you (85 vs 58)
- →accessibility matters most to you (88 vs 60)
- →you want a free tier to start (5GB storage + compute credits, permanent free tier)
- →you need broad SDK coverage (9 official SDKs vs 6)
- →your use case matches its focus: managed milvus at billion-vector scale
Pricing side by side
- Model
- Per GB queried/written + storage
- Free tier
- No
- Launch$16/mo minimum
- Scale$256/mo minimum
- Enterprise$4,096+/mo (≈35% usage premium)
- Model
- Per compute-unit-hour + storage
- Free tier
- 5GB storage + compute credits, permanent free tier
- Free (Serverless)$0/month
- ServerlessPay-as-you-go (from ~$0.35/M vCU)
- DedicatedFrom ~$99/month (compute + storage)
- Business Critical (BC)Custom
- BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)Custom
Vendor-published pricing, verified 2026-06-27 (Turbopuffer) and 2026-06-27 (Zilliz Cloud (Milvus)).
SDK and language coverage
Both · 3
PythonGoJava
Only Turbopuffer · 3
TypeScript / JavaScriptRubyHTTP REST API
Only Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) · 6
Node.js / JavaScriptC# (.NET, contributed by Microsoft)C++Rust (in development)RESTful APIgRPC API
Strengths and weaknesses
- +Object-storage-first architecture cuts storage cost to ~$20-70/TB/month versus ~$1,600/TB/month for RAM-resident incumbents
- +Warm query latency competitive with in-memory engines (~10ms p90 vector, ~18ms p90 BM25 on 1M docs)
- +Native hybrid search: dense + sparse vectors, BM25 full-text, attribute filtering, and regex via trigram indexes
- –High cold-query latency (~444ms p90) when a namespace isn't cached, bad for always-must-be-fast workloads
- –Relatively high write latency (~248ms p90 for 512KB upserts) due to object-storage durability path
- –No free tier and a monthly spend minimum, making pgvector cheaper for small/early projects
- +Top-tier benchmark performance: Milvus 2.6 delivers ~4x throughput and 72% memory reduction via RaBitQ quantization while holding ~95% recall, and 3-7x higher QPS than Elasticsearch on full-text workloads
- +Scales to billions of vectors; reviewers report searching millions of vectors in ~200ms
- +Removes the heavy operational burden of self-hosting distributed Milvus (Kubernetes, monitoring, backups, HA)
- –Cost is the most cited complaint, managed pricing can be far more expensive than self-hosting Milvus on a cheap VPS for small/hobby projects
- –vCU / CU-hour + tiered-storage billing model can be hard to forecast and reason about
- –Underlying Milvus has a steep learning curve, especially for distributed/self-hosted setups
Turbopuffer vs Zilliz Cloud (Milvus): questions
- Which has better documentation, Turbopuffer or Zilliz Cloud (Milvus)?
- Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) scores higher on documentation and developer experience: 82 vs 74 out of 100.
- Which is more reliable, Turbopuffer or Zilliz Cloud (Milvus)?
- Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) scores higher on reliability: 88 vs 76 out of 100.
- Do Turbopuffer and Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) have a free tier?
- Turbopuffer: no free tier. Zilliz Cloud (Milvus): yes (5GB storage + compute credits, permanent free tier).
- How are Turbopuffer and Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) priced?
- Turbopuffer: Per GB queried/written + storage. Zilliz Cloud (Milvus): Per compute-unit-hour + storage.
- Which has more official SDKs?
- Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) lists 9 official SDKs, Turbopuffer lists 6.
Other Vector Database comparisons
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