Vector databases · Comparison
Weaviate Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud
2 products compared side by side: what you pay for with each one first, then the five access facts, entry prices, recorded plan limits and the bottom line of each review. The evidence note under the table says how each product was checked.
Side by side
| Metric | Weaviate Cloud | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Saves engineering timeThe open-source Weaviate engine run for you, with hybrid search, RBAC and multi-tenancy on every plan and no per-query or per-write charges. | Saves engineering timeManaged Milvus with a serverless option billed per request, free bulk import from object storage, and the Apache 2.0 engine as a way out. |
| Overall score | 6.2 | 7.2Best |
| Free option | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | No card needed | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $45/mo minimum | $4/million vCUs |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing unit | Vector dimensions, GiB of storage and GiB of backup, for each of 3 replicas | Serverless: vCUs and GB-month; Dedicated: CU-hours and GB-month |
| Free option | Free cluster (100,000 objects), no card | Free 5 GB cluster, no card; $100 trial credits for 30 days |
| Reference scenario (1M vectors, 1M queries) | $255/mo on Flex, official calculator | $113.28/mo on Serverless (GCP us-west1), computed |
| Plan minimum | Flex $45 a month; Premium through sales | None |
| Hybrid search | Every plan (BM25F plus vector, fused) | Every plan (BM25 full-text plus vector) |
| Backups | Daily on Flex, kept 7 days; restore through support | Dedicated clusters; point-in-time recovery on Business Critical |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 (Markdown copy of the security page) | SOC 2 Type II (under NDA) and ISO 27001:2022 |
| HIPAA BAA | Premium Dedicated, through sales | Business Critical, through sales |
| EU regions | Region selection on Dedicated tiers; EU regions not named | Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions |
| SSO | SAML on Premium | SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up |
| BYOC | Named on the security page; through sales | Through sales, annual commitment |
| Data export | Cursor API; Parquet export not available on Cloud | SDK iterators; backup file export in private preview |
| Self-host path | Weaviate open source (BSD-3-Clause; some enterprise features licensed separately) | Milvus (Apache 2.0), same SDKs |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Weaviate Cloud is the managed form of an open-source engine, billed by what you store with three replicas included. Enterprise controls sit on Premium through sales, and its rates are easiest to read through the calculator. | From its public pages, Zilliz Cloud is managed Milvus with per-request serverless billing, free bulk import, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and an open-source exit. Serverless runs in two regions only, and several prices differ between its pages. |
Evidence: Weaviate Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Zilliz Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
When to pick each
In the words of each review, with the date its facts were checked.
From our Weaviate Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want no per-request charges and three replicas on the first paid plan.
- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want bulk import from object storage, and SAML SSO and an audit log on a plan bought online.
From our Zilliz Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want bulk import from object storage and SSO without a sales contract.
- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want no per-request billing and three replicas included on the first paid plan.
Entry price
Baseline: each product's cheapest paid plan, per month. Included usage differs, so read the line under each price.
- Weaviate CloudFlex$45/mo minimumPay as you go, monthly; from $0.00465 per 1M vector dimensions, $0.12 per GiB storage, $0.03036 per GiB backup
- Highly available clusters with replication
- Daily backups kept 7 days
- AWS or GCP, 7 regions
- Embeddings and Query Agent billed by usage
- Zilliz CloudStandard (Serverless)$4/million vCUsPlus $0.30 per GB-month of storage; GCP us-west1 and AWS eu-central-1 only; no minimum
- Reads and writes billed in vCUs
- Import from object storage at no charge
- Organization and project RBAC, API keys
- No backups on Serverless clusters
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Weaviate Cloud 2026-10-16, Zilliz Cloud 2026-10-16.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- Zilliz CloudSelf-serve sign-up, no card needed; the highest score of the 2 self-serve products here (7.2/10).
- If you want to try it without entering a card
- Zilliz CloudFree plan, no card needed, and the highest score of the 2 that skip the card (7.2/10).
- Lowest starter price
- Weaviate Cloud$45/mo minimum for the Flex plan. Zilliz Cloud lists no comparable paid price.
- Highest overall score
- Zilliz Cloud7.2/10 (Good). The review shows the score breakdown and the run behind it.
Picked by fixed rules from the table above, not by hand. How we score
Full reviews
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