September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since.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 › Enterprise · September 2026 Edition

Vector databases for enterprise buyers

Asked as “vector database”, and as “vector search database for AI applications”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 43 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
53%
Clear leader
53Pinecone19Qdrant12pgvector16others

53% of first choices, clear leader.

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.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Pinecone53%28%64criticized default
02Qdrant19%2%50accepted challenger
03pgvector12%31%54criticized challenger
04Weaviate9%11%61accepted challenger
05Zilliz Cloud5%13%15accepted challenger
06Milvus / Zilliz Cloud2%0%13accepted challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11Chroma0%67%15criticized challenger
09Elasticsearch0%20%15accepted challenger
07Milvus0%20%41accepted challenger
10Redis Vector Search0%15%13accepted challenger
08Azure AI Search0%0%13accepted 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 headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not enterprise.
All fifteen head-to-head pages: the top six products, each against each

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
07
08
E09
R10
11
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative70%
Key
01Pinecone53%
02Qdrant19%
03pgvector12%
04Weaviate9%
05Zilliz Cloud5%
06Milvus / Zilliz Cloud2%
07Milvus0%
08Azure AI Search0%
09Elasticsearch0%
10Redis Vector Search0%
11Chroma0%

What they warned about

Six of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, 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%
18 of 64 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Avoid "Serverless" plans (like Pinecone Serverless or standard AWS Opensearch Vector Engine) for thousands of users.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt
pgvector
31%
17 of 54 labels negative · 8 of 12 models
“Postgres + pgvector if you already standardize on Postgres and want to inherit existing controls, though you may trade off scale and specialized search features” GPT-5.4 mini, scale prompt
Chroma
67%
10 of 15 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“Many "developer‑friendly" tools (e.g., Chroma) are excellent for prototypes but lack enterprise features ... avoid them for mission‑critical RAG pipelines” GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt
Milvus
20%
8 of 41 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“avoid highly complex C++ or Python-based microservices architectures like Milvus or Zilliz (when self-hosted) unless you have a dedicated Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team” Qwen 3.7 Flash, 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

67 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. 928 links across 281 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Firecrawl35 answers · 36 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Atlan32 answers · 32 citations · 9 models
31 answers · 31 citations · 10 models
27 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
25 answers · 32 citations · 10 models
21 answers · 28 citations · 8 models
21 answers · 21 citations · 9 models
20 answers · 20 citations · 8 models
19 answers · 20 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Actian18 answers · 21 citations · 10 models
vendor site · G218 answers · 18 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Pinecone17 answers · 26 citations · 8 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.

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
Pinecone pinecone.io53%18860,5003,92990,633144
Qdrant qdrant.tech19%1866,6001808,06424
pgvector pgvector.app12%1725,400119
Weaviate weaviate.io9%1582,900545,054
Zilliz Cloud zilliz.com5%26140211,801247
Milvus milvus.io
Milvus / Zilliz Cloud 2%, Milvus 0%
2%963,60016952,360
Azure azure.com
Azure AI Search 0%
0%22301,00047,904
Elasticsearch0%12,1002,798
Vespa vespa.ai0%7135,00012,7781,83112
Redis Vector Search redis.io0%17112,42418

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 16 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (encore.dev, g2.com, medium.com, pinecone.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 an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which vector search database for AI applications would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade vector databases and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best vector database for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a vector database. What should we look at?”Negative“Which vector databases should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Pinecone
Four alternativesMilvus, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud, pgvector
PineconeHeld
Three alternativesMilvus, Weaviate, pgvector
Pinecone, Qdrant
Two alternativesMilvus, pgvector
Qdrant, Weaviate
One alternativepgvector
against: Pinecone
no first choiceagainst: FAISS, Milvus
GPT-5.4 miniPinecone
Two alternativesMilvus, Weaviate
PineconeHeld
Three alternativesAmazon OpenSearch / Aurora / DynamoDB / Neptune, Google Cloud Vector Search / Agent Retrieval, Qdrant
Pinecone
Four alternativesAzure AI Search, Milvus, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Weaviate
against: Elasticsearch / OpenSearch, pgvector
Pinecone
Three alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate
no first choiceagainst: pgvectornothing named
Gemini 3.5 Flashpgvector
Four alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
PineconeChanged
Four alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
pgvector
Three alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
against: Elasticsearch / OpenSearch, Redis Vector Search
Qdrant
Two alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, `pgvector` with `pgvectorscale`
against: Pinecone, Weaviate
pgvector
Seven alternativesElasticsearch / OpenSearch, Milvus, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: Chroma, FAISS, HNSWlib, LanceDB, Milvus, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, ScaNN, pgvector
Perplexity SonarPinecone, pgvector
Three alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate
PineconeChanged
Four alternativesAzure AI Search, Elasticsearch, Milvus, Weaviate
against: pgvector
Pinecone
Three alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: pgvector
Qdrant
Two alternativesMixpeek Vector Store, pgvector
no first choiceagainst: Chroma, FAISS, Pinecone, pgvector
Grok 4.20Pinecone
Two alternativesWeaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: Oracle, pgvector
PineconeHeld
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Pinecone, Zilliz Cloud
Four alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
against: Chroma, Elasticsearch, LanceDB
Qdrant
Two alternativesMilvus, Weaviate
against: Pinecone, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
Pinecone
Four alternativesChroma, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: Milvus, pgvector
against: Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
Mistral SmallPinecone, Weaviate
One alternativepgvector
against: Milvus
Pinecone, WeaviateHeld
Two alternativesAzure AI Search, Milvus
no first choiceMilvus / Zilliz Cloud
One alternativePinecone
against: Weaviate
no first choiceagainst: FAISS, Pinecone
DeepSeek V4 FlashPinecone
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
PineconeHeld
Six alternativesAzure AI Search, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Vertex AI Vector Search, Weaviate, pgvector
Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Two alternativesRedis Vector Search, pgvector
against: Chroma, LanceDB
Qdrant, Weaviate
One alternativeMilvus
against: Pinecone
no first choiceagainst: Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choiceno first choice
Two alternativesQdrant, Weaviate
against: Pinecone, pgvector
Pinecone
Four alternativesAzure AI Search, Azure OpenAI Service, Milvus, Weaviate
against: Chroma, Pinecone, pgvector
Qwen 3.7 Flashpgvector
Four alternativesElasticsearch, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
PineconeChanged
Three alternativesMilvus, Weaviate, pgvector
no first choice
Six alternativesElasticsearch, Milvus, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
Pinecone
Three alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, pgvector
against: OpenSearch, Pinecone
no first choiceagainst: FAISS, Milvus, Numpy, Pinecone, Zilliz Cloud
Kimi K2Pinecone, Zilliz Cloud
Two alternativesWeaviate, pgvector
PineconeChanged
Two alternativesWeaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: pgvector
Pinecone
Three alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Elasticsearch, pgvector
Qdrant
One alternativeMilvus
against: Pinecone
Pinecone
Four alternativesMilvus, Qdrant, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
against: pgvector
against: Annoy, Chroma, FAISS, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
GLM 4.7 FlashXPinecone
Four alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
QdrantChanged
Three alternativesMilvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pinecone, Weaviate
against: pgvector
Pinecone
Eight alternativesElasticsearch, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Qdrant, Redis Vector Search, Vespa, Weaviate, pgvector
against: Chroma
Zilliz Cloud
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
against: Pinecone
no first choiceagainst: Chroma, Elasticsearch, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Redis Vector Search, pgvector
MiniMax M2.5pgvector
Two alternativesMilvus, Weaviate
against: Pinecone
PineconeChanged
Three alternativesAzure AI Search, Weaviate, pgvector
Pinecone
Seven alternativesElasticsearch, Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Qdrant, Redis Vector Search, Vespa, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant
Two alternativesPinecone, Zilliz Cloud
against: Upstash Vector
no first choiceagainst: Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, 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 10:38yes1611 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:44yes57 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:00yes1126 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:27yes206 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 13:22yes3821 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:02yes55 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:49yes1015 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:32yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:16no043 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:35yes1533 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:09yes1545 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:13yes922 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:41yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:37yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:56yes822 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:45yes205 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 11:26yes3716 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:58yes56 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:34yes1923 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:35yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:21no040 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:16yes1984 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:10yes1524 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:02yes941 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:17yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:59yes712 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:32yes2331 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:15yes2012 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 12:27yes2114 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:59yes58 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:54yes1823 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:40yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:05no040 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:32yes1536 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:00yes1382 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:38yes519 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:00yes1411 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:37yes35 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:11yes1326 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:41yes179 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 14:02yes4620 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:49yes58 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:08yes1619 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:49yes54 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:37yes535 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:03yes1430 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:50yes2777 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:07yes1567 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:16yes2711 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:12yes514 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:38no022 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:39yes2017 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 10:26yes1812 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:05no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:06yes2639 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:10yes55 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:21yes537 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:41yes1885 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:44yes1432 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:31yes532 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:10yes98 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:36yes69 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:05yes2230 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:32yes208 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 10:48yes2019 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:15yes58 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:46yes1630 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:16yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:28yes547 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:01yes2944 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:56yes1472 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:52yes1438 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 (+ pgvector) read as pgvector
PostgreSQL (via pgvector) read as pgvector
Redis read as Redis Vector Search
Redis (Enterprise) read as Redis Vector Search
Redis (Redis VL) read as Redis Vector Search
Redis (with RedisSearch or RedisStack) read as Redis Vector Search
Redis Enterprise read as Redis Vector Search
Redis Stack read as Redis Vector Search
Redis Vector read as Redis Vector Search
Supabase read as Supabase pgvector
Unresolved, counted raw
Amazon OpenSearch / Aurora / DynamoDB / Neptune
Databricks Vector Search
Google Cloud Vector Search / Agent Retrieval
Mixpeek Vector Store (MVS)
Numpy
TiDB Cloud Serverless
`pgvector` with `pgvectorscale`
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
← Time series DBsOrchestration →