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September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › Data platform › Vector databases · September 2026 Edition

Vector databases

Asked as “vector database”, and as “vector search database for AI applications”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 51 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
37%
Qdrant
Contested · pgvector 35%
37Qdrant35pgvector14Pinecone14others

37% of first choices, contested.

ShowinginAll 136 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businesspgvector46%Clear leaderStanding →Mid-marketQdrant37%ContestedThis pageEnterprisePinecone53%Clear leaderStanding →

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Qdrant37%5%63endorsed leader
02pgvector35%14%51endorsed leader
03Pinecone14%28%58criticized challenger
04Weaviate6%15%61accepted challenger
05Chroma4%27%30criticized challenger
06Milvus2%37%38criticized challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08Milvus / Zilliz Cloud0%36%14criticized challenger
07FAISS0%18%11accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Head to head
Qdrant vs pgvectorQdrant vs PineconeQdrant vs Weaviate
All fifteen head-to-head pages: the top six products, each against each
Qdrant vs ChromaQdrant vs Milvuspgvector vs Pineconepgvector vs Weaviatepgvector vs Chromapgvector vs MilvusPinecone vs WeaviatePinecone vs ChromaPinecone vs MilvusWeaviate vs ChromaWeaviate vs MilvusChroma vs Milvus

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
F07
08
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Qdrant37%
02pgvector35%
03Pinecone14%
04Weaviate6%
05Chroma4%
06Milvus2%
07FAISS0%
08Milvus / Zilliz Cloud0%

What they warned about

One of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Pinecone
28%
16 of 58 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Specific Targets to Watch Out For: Pinecone (purely managed serverless)... you cannot take your data elsewhere without significant re-architecture.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Milvus
37%
14 of 38 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“What to Avoid (For Now)... Milvus / Vespa... generally overkill for mid-market requirements.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, direct prompt
Weaviate
15%
9 of 61 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Avoid Initially: Pinecone/Weaviate Cloud (managed convenience costs $25-70/mo min after free tiers” Grok 4.20, budget prompt
pgvector
14%
7 of 51 labels negative · 7 of 12 models
“When you need very high-scale, pure vector search | It is often recommended for existing Postgres shops, but can be a weaker fit for large-scale semantic search workloads.” Perplexity Sonar, negative prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

68 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 880 links across 257 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

firecrawl.dev
vendor site · Firecrawl47 answers · 47 citations · 11 models
dev.to
28 answers · 35 citations · 10 models
encore.dev
28 answers · 28 citations · 10 models
redis.io
vendor site · Redis24 answers · 25 citations · 10 models
medium.com
18 answers · 24 citations · 8 models
marktechpost.com
18 answers · 19 citations · 8 models
iternal.ai
17 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
zenml.io
vendor site · ZenML17 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
reddit.com
14 answers · 24 citations · 6 models
g2.com
vendor site · G214 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
pecollective.com
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
actian.com
vendor site · Actian13 answers · 17 citations · 11 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

firecrawl.dev/blog/best-vector-databases
47 answers · 11 models
encore.dev/articles/best-vector-databases
28 answers · 10 models
iternal.ai/insights/best-vector-databases-2026
17 answers · 8 models
redis.io/blog/best-open-source-vector-databases-comparison
17 answers · 10 models
zenml.io/blog/vector-databases-for-rag
17 answers · 8 models
g2.com/articles/best-vector-databases
14 answers · 7 models
marktechpost.com/2026/05/10/best-vector-databases-in-2026-pricing-scale-lim…
14 answers · 6 models
mastra.ai/articles/best-vector-database-providers
13 answers · 9 models
actian.com/blog/databases/how-to-evaluate-vector-databases-in-2026
12 answers · 10 models
liveblocks.io/blog/whats-the-best-vector-database-for-building-ai-products
12 answers · 7 models

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best vector database”, “vector database”, “vector databases”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsGoogle ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Qdrant qdrant.tech37%1866,6001808,06424
pgvector pgvector.app35%1725,400119
Pinecone pinecone.io14%18860,5003,92990,633144
Weaviate weaviate.io6%1582,900545,054
Chroma trychroma.com4%9533,1007,1562,1010
Milvus milvus.io
Milvus 2%, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud 0%		2%963,60016952,360
pgvector + pgvectorscale2%
LanceDB lancedb.com0%292,900301,21318
Zilliz Cloud zilliz.com0%26140211,801247
Vespa vespa.ai0%7135,00012,7781,83112

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 16 sites; 6 of them are among the sites the models cited here (encore.dev, g2.com, medium.com, pecollective.com, reddit.com, zenml.io). The first result for “best vector database” is zenml.io.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best vector database for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which vector search database for AI applications would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top vector databases and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best vector database for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a vector database. What should we look at?”Negative“Which vector databases should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Pinecone, Qdrant
Two alternativesWeaviate, pgvector
against: MilvusPineconeChanged
Two alternativesChroma, pgvector
no first choiceChroma
Three alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate
no first choiceagainst: Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
GPT-5.4 miniQdrant, pgvector
Three alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pinecone, Weaviate
QdrantChanged
Three alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
no first choice
Five alternativesElasticsearch / OpenSearch, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant
Two alternativesChroma, Milvus
against: Pinecone, Weaviateno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 Flashpgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Chroma, Milvus, VespapgvectorHeld
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
pgvector
Six alternativesChroma, LanceDB, Milvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
pgvector
Five alternativesChroma, LanceDB, Pinecone, Qdrant, Turbopuffer
against: Milvus, Weaviatepgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Milvusagainst: Chroma, FAISS, Milvus, Pinecone, pgvector
Perplexity SonarQdrant, pgvector
Three alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
QdrantChanged
Three alternativesPinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
no first choiceQdrant, pgvector
One alternativeChroma
against: Pineconeno first choiceagainst: Elasticsearch, Milvus, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Grok 4.20pgvector
Two alternativesPinecone, Qdrant
against: Chroma, Milvus / Zilliz CloudQdrant, pgvectorChanged
Two alternativesPinecone, Weaviate
against: Annoy, FAISS, Milvus / Zilliz Cloudno first choiceChroma
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
against: Pinecone, WeaviatePinecone
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
against: Chromaagainst: ChromaDB, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
Mistral Smallpgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
MilvusChanged
Three alternativesElasticsearch, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Weaviate
no first choiceQdrant
Three alternativesChromaDB, Weaviate, pgvector
no first choiceagainst: ChromaDB, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud
DeepSeek V4 FlashQdrant, Weaviate
One alternativepgvector
against: Milvus, PineconeQdrantChanged
Three alternativesPinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
against: Milvus / Zilliz Cloudno first choiceQdrant, pgvector
One alternativeChromaDB
against: Milvus / Zilliz Cloudno first choice
One alternativepgvector
against: ChromaDB, Elasticsearch, Milvus, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, Redis Vector Search, Weaviate
Llama 4 Maverickpgvectorno first choiceChangedno first choice
Five alternativesChroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Qdrantagainst: Milvus, Pineconeno first choiceagainst: Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Qwen 3.7 Flashpgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: MilvusPinecone, WeaviateChanged
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
Pinecone
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
against: ChromaDBQdrant
Three alternativesChroma, Milvus, pgvector
no first choiceagainst: Milvus, Pinecone, Zilliz Cloud, pgvector
Kimi K2Pinecone, pgvector
Two alternativesQdrant, Weaviate
against: ChromaPineconeChanged
Four alternativesChroma, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Pinecone
Five alternativesChromaDB, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant, pgvector
Two alternativesChroma, Milvus
Pinecone
Five alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud, pgvector
against: Chroma, Pinecone, pgvector
GLM 4.7 FlashXpgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
QdrantChanged
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector + pgvectorscale
Pinecone
Seven alternativesChromaDB, LanceDB, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Vespa, Weaviate, pgvector + pgvectorscale
against: Elasticsearch / OpenSearchQdrant, pgvector
Four alternativesChromaDB, Milvus, Redis Vector Search, Weaviate
against: Pineconeno first choiceagainst: Pinecone, Redis Vector Search, Weaviate, pgvector
MiniMax M2.5pgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
QdrantChanged
Two alternativesPinecone, pgvector
no first choice
Seven alternativesChroma, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pinecone, Qdrant, Vespa, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant, Weaviate
One alternativeChroma
against: Milvuspgvector + pgvectorscale
Five alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: Chroma, Pinecone, pgvector
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:12yes179 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:16yes16 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:27yes925 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:31yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:14yes2917 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:30yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:51yes1718 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:57yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:38yes529 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:12yes1022 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:33yes2856 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:46yes918 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:41yes97 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:42yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:12yes1123 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 14:07yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:06yes3316 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:52yes56 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:26yes2131 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:51yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:58yes533 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:21yes1448 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:04yes1424 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:53yes1040 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:12yes1811 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:02yes68 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:08yes1825 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:30yes209 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:19yes2814 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:23yes913 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:16yes1820 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:10yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:19yes526 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:01yes837 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:20yes18222 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:06yes517 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:26yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:14yes45 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:51yes1418 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:07yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:31yes1616 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:33yes86 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:08yes912 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:27yes73 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:07yes526 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:50yes517 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:45yes1450 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:39yes525 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:43no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:12no08 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:16yes927 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:27yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 11:40yes1510 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:13no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:59yes1027 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:19yes52 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:31no042 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:46yes1326 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:14yes2065 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:05yes525 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:33yes1510 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:57yes68 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:51yes1528 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:25yes2010 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:48yes4120 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:25yes54 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:06yes2824 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:30yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:24yes950 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:38yes3036 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:00yes1465 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:11yes1529 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
MongoDB read as MongoDB Atlas Vector Search
MongoDB Atlas read as MongoDB Atlas Vector Search
PostgreSQL read as pgvector
Redis read as Redis Vector Search
Redis (RediSearch) read as Redis Vector Search
Redis Open Source read as Redis Vector Search
Redis Stack (RediSearch) read as Redis Vector Search
Unresolved, counted raw
Actian VectorAI
Elasticsearch with ANN
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in data platform

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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