head to head · open source
Milvus vs rqlite
Milvus has 46,595 GitHub stars, 4,328 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rqlite has 17,914 stars, 823 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 160% (46,595 vs 17,914 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; rqlite is written in Go under MIT. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, rqlite 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 | rqlite | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 823 |
| 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 rqlite if
- You want the rqlite feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and rqlite 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 rqlite
rqlite is a feature rich, rock solid, fault tolerant, distributed relational database built on SQLite. It's lightweight , developer friendly , and exceptionally easy to operate , offering effortless installation and deployment. Use rqlite to reliably store your most important data, ensuring it's always available to your applications think etcd, but with relational modeling available. Whether you're deploying resilient services in the cloud or reliable applications at the edge , rqlite provides a robust solution for critical data. Website · Slack Quick Start Check out the full Quick Start guide 1. Run a rqlite…
read the full rqlite overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or rqlite more popular?
Milvus has 46,595 GitHub stars and rqlite has 17,914. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and rqlite free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rqlite under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and rqlite?
Milvus is written in Go and rqlite in Go. 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 rqlite?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,595 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rqlite if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.