head to head · open source
Milvus vs dbx
Milvus has 46,563 GitHub stars, 4,325 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbx has 28,664 stars, 2,616 forks, 1,406 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Milvus leads on adoption by 62% (46,563 vs 28,664 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dbx is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dbx 9%. Milvus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Milvus | dbx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 29K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Milvus if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbx if
- You want the dbx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and dbx fits your workflow better
About Milvus
What is Milvus? 🐦 Milvus is a high performance vector database built for scale. It powers AI applications by efficiently organizing and searching vast amounts of unstructured data, such as text, images, and multi modal information. 🧑💻 Written in Go and C++, Milvus implements hardware acceleration for CPU/GPU to achieve best in class vector search performance. Thanks to its fully distributed and K8s native architecture, Milvus can scale horizontally, handle tens of thousands of search queries on billions of vectors, and keep data fresh with real time streaming updates. Milvus also supports Standalone mode for…
read the full Milvus overview →
About dbx
90+ databases in 25 MB. Desktop, Docker, CLI, built in AI assistant, and MCP Server. <img src="
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or dbx more popular?
Milvus has 46,563 GitHub stars and dbx has 28,664. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and dbx free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbx under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and dbx?
Milvus is written in Go and dbx in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Milvus or dbx?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,563 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbx if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.