head to head · open source
Milvus vs zookeeper
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars, 4,327 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zookeeper has 12,829 stars, 7,327 forks, 242 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Milvus leads on adoption by 263% (46,578 vs 12,829 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; zookeeper is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, zookeeper 57%. 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 | zookeeper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 7.3K |
| 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 zookeeper if
- You want the zookeeper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and zookeeper 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 zookeeper
Apache ZooKeeper [![GitHub Actions CI][ciBadge]][ciLink] [![Travis CI][trBadge]][trLink] [![Maven Central][mcBadge]][mcLink] [![License][liBadge]][liLink] For the latest information about Apache ZooKeeper, please visit our website at: and our wiki, at: Packaging/release artifacts Either downloaded from or found in zookeeper assembly/target directory after building the project with maven. apache zookeeper [version].tar.gz Contains all the source files which can be built by running: mvn clean install To generate an aggregated apidocs for zookeeper server and zookeeper jute: mvn javadoc:aggregate (generated files…
read the full zookeeper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or zookeeper more popular?
Milvus has 46,578 GitHub stars and zookeeper has 12,829. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and zookeeper free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and zookeeper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and zookeeper?
Milvus is written in Go and zookeeper in Java. 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 zookeeper?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,578 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose zookeeper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.