head to head · open source
Milvus vs Memgraph
Milvus has 46,595 GitHub stars, 4,328 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Memgraph has 4,647 stars, 298 forks, 813 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Milvus leads on adoption by 903% (46,595 vs 4,647 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Memgraph is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Memgraph 6%. Memgraph 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 | Memgraph | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 298 |
| 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 Memgraph if
- You want the Memgraph feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Memgraph 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 Memgraph
:clipboard: Description Memgraph is a high performance, in memory graph database that powers real time AI context and graph analytics. Built in C/C++, it serves as the graph engine for GraphRAG pipelines, AI memory systems, and agentic workflows — delivering sub millisecond multi hop traversals for any system that needs structured, connected context alongside semantic vector or text search. Memgraph provides both in a single query layer: built in text and vector indexes for similarity search combined with full graph traversal, so retrieval pipelines can run as a single atomic database operation instead of being…
read the full Memgraph overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Memgraph more popular?
Milvus has 46,595 GitHub stars and Memgraph has 4,647. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and Memgraph free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Memgraph has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Milvus and Memgraph?
Milvus is written in Go and Memgraph 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 Memgraph?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,595 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Memgraph if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.