head to head · open source
Milvus vs acl
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars, 4,327 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. acl has 3,106 stars, 947 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 1,400% (46,578 vs 3,106 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; acl is written in C under LGPL-2.1. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, acl 30%. 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 | acl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 947 |
| 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 acl if
- You want the acl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and acl 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 acl
中文 Acl Advanced Cross Platform C/C++ Network Communication Library and Server Framework 0. About Acl Project Acl (Advanced C/C++ Library) is a powerful cross platform network communication library and server programming framework that supports Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, macOS, Android, iOS, and HarmonyOS. Numerous applications developed with Acl run on various devices, providing stable and reliable services to hundreds of millions of users. The Acl project includes a rich set of functional modules: network communication, server framework, application protocols, various codecs, and more. It has built in…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or acl more popular?
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars and acl has 3,106. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and acl free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and acl under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and acl?
Milvus is written in Go and acl 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, Milvus or acl?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,578 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose acl if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.