head to head · open source
Milvus vs lowdb
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars, 4,327 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lowdb has 22,582 stars, 962 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 106% (46,578 vs 22,582 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lowdb is written in JavaScript under MIT. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lowdb 4%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Milvus | lowdb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-03-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 962 |
| 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 lowdb if
- You want the lowdb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and lowdb 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 lowdb
lowdb Simple to use type safe local JSON database 🦉 If you know JavaScript, you know how to use lowdb. Read or create db.json Use plain JavaScript to change data In the same spirit, query using native Array functions: It's that simple. db.data is just a JavaScript object, no magic. Sponsors Become a sponsor and have your company logo here 👉 GitHub Sponsors Features Lightweight Minimalist TypeScript Plain JavaScript Safe atomic writes Hackable: Change storage, file format (JSON, YAML, ...) or add encryption via adapters Extend it with lodash, ramda, ... for super powers! Automatically switches to fast in memory…
read the full lowdb overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or lowdb more popular?
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars and lowdb has 22,582. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and lowdb free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lowdb under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and lowdb?
Milvus is written in Go and lowdb in JavaScript. 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 lowdb?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,578 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lowdb if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.