head to head · open source
faiss vs server
faiss has 40,939 GitHub stars, 4,527 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped yesterday. server has 8,250 stars, 2,105 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. faiss leads on adoption by 396% (40,939 vs 8,250 stars). faiss is written in C++ under MIT; server is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. faiss has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, server 26%. 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 | server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.5K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| 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 server if
- You want the server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and server 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 server
MariaDB Server is a community developed, GPL 2.0 relational database server forked from MySQL by the original MySQL developers, aimed at teams that want MySQL compatibility with a sanely licensed, independently governed SQL server.
read the full server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is faiss or server more popular?
faiss has 40,939 GitHub stars and server has 8,250. faiss has the larger community by that measure.
Are faiss and server free?
Both are open source. faiss is licensed under MIT and server under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between faiss and server?
faiss is written in C++ and server in C++. 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 server?
Choose faiss if you want the larger community (40,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose server if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.