head to head · open source
Milvus vs Neon Postgres
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars, 4,327 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Neon Postgres has 23,294 stars, 1,132 forks, 558 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 100% (46,578 vs 23,294 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Neon Postgres is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Neon Postgres 5%. 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 | Neon Postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-08-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 Neon Postgres if
- You want the Neon Postgres feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Neon Postgres 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 Neon Postgres
Neon Neon is an open source serverless Postgres database platform. It separates storage and compute and substitutes the PostgreSQL storage layer by redistributing data across a cluster of nodes. Quick start Try the Neon Free Tier to create a serverless Postgres instance. Then connect to it with your preferred Postgres client (psql, dbeaver, etc) or use the online SQL Editor. See Connect from any application for connection instructions. Alternatively, compile and run the project locally. Architecture overview A Neon installation consists of compute nodes and the Neon storage engine. Compute nodes are stateless…
read the full Neon Postgres overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Neon Postgres more popular?
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars and Neon Postgres has 23,294. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and Neon Postgres free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Neon Postgres under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and Neon Postgres?
Milvus is written in Go and Neon Postgres in Rust. 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 Neon Postgres?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,578 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Neon Postgres if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.