head to head · open source
faiss vs server
faiss has 41,256 GitHub stars, 4,586 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. server has 8,524 stars, 2,267 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. faiss leads on adoption by 384% (41,256 vs 8,524 stars). faiss is written in C++ under MIT; server is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. faiss has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, server 27%. server 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
| faiss | server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick faiss if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick server if
- You want the server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and server fits your workflow better
About faiss
Faiss Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. It also contains supporting code for evaluation and parameter tuning. Faiss is written in C++ with complete wrappers for Python/numpy. Some of the most useful algorithms are implemented on the GPU. It is developed primarily at Meta's Fundamental AI Research group. News See CHANGELOG.md for detailed information about latest features. Introduction Faiss contains several methods for similarity search. It assumes that…
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About server
MariaDB Server MariaDB Server is one of the most widely deployed open source relational databases. It is built by a global community of contributors together with the MariaDB Foundation and MariaDB plc, and it powers workloads from small applications to large scale production systems. MariaDB began as a fork of MySQL, led by the original MySQL developers, and it maintains a high degree of MySQL compatibility. It has since grown into a database with its own capabilities, including native vector search, multiple pluggable storage engines, synchronous clustering, and analytical features, while remaining a…
read the full server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is faiss or server more popular?
faiss has 41,256 GitHub stars and server has 8,524. faiss has the larger community by that measure.
Are faiss and server free?
Both are open source. faiss is licensed under MIT and server under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between faiss and server?
faiss is written in C++ and server 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, faiss or server?
Choose faiss if you want the larger community (41,256 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose server if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.