head to head · open source
faiss vs deep-searcher
faiss has 40,939 GitHub stars, 4,527 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deep-searcher has 8,273 stars, 804 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. faiss leads on adoption by 395% (40,939 vs 8,273 stars). faiss is written in C++ under MIT; deep-searcher is written in Python under Apache-2.0. faiss has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, deep-searcher 10%. faiss 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
| faiss | deep-searcher | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2025-11-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.5K | ⑂ 804 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick faiss if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick deep-searcher if
- You want the deep-searcher feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and deep-searcher fits your workflow better
About faiss
Faiss is an MIT licensed C++ library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors, with complete Python and NumPy wrappers, developed primarily at Meta's Fundamental AI Research group, and it is intended for engineers and researchers who need nearest neighbour search over vector sets that range from small collections to sets that possibly do not fit in RAM.
read the full faiss overview →
About deep-searcher
DeepSearcher is an open source deep research tool that combines large language models with vector databases to search, evaluate, and reason over private data, producing accurate answers and comprehensive reports. Written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 license, it lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem as a machine learning infrastructure project, built around agentic retrieval augmented generation and the Zilliz/Milvus vector search stack. The project has been on GitHub for two years, carries 8265 stars and 803 forks, and had its most recent push on 19 November 2025.
read the full deep-searcher overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is faiss or deep-searcher more popular?
faiss has 40,939 GitHub stars and deep-searcher has 8,273. faiss has the larger community by that measure.
Are faiss and deep-searcher free?
Both are open source. faiss is licensed under MIT and deep-searcher under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between faiss and deep-searcher?
faiss is written in C++ and deep-searcher in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, faiss or deep-searcher?
Choose faiss if you want the larger community (40,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose deep-searcher if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.