Vector databases · Comparison

Qdrant Cloud vs Weaviate Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud

3 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

Qdrant Cloud vs Weaviate Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud: value, access facts, plan limits and bottom lines
Metric	Qdrant Cloud	Weaviate Cloud	Zilliz Cloud
What you're paying for	Worth the priceA managed open-source vector engine on nodes you size, with no per-query charge, an exit to self-hosted Qdrant and a free cluster for about 1M vectors.	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	7.0	6.2	7.2Best
Free option	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan
Card to start	No card needed	No card needed	No card needed
Getting access	Self-serve	Self-serve	Self-serve
Starter priceCheapest paid plan	$0.03566/node-hour	$45/mo minimum	$4/million vCUs
Pricing model	Usage-based	Usage-based	Usage-based
Pricing page	Public prices	Public prices	Public prices
Billing unit	Provisioned nodes per hour (RAM, vCPU and disk), plus backup storage	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 1 GB cluster (about 1M 768-dimension vectors), no card	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)	$102.51/mo on Standard (3 × mx1 nodes), official calculator	$255/mo on Flex, official calculator	$113.28/mo on Serverless (GCP us-west1), computed
Plan minimum	None on Standard; Premium minimum not published	Flex $45 a month; Premium through sales	None
Hybrid search	Every plan (dense plus sparse or BM25)	Every plan (BM25F plus vector, fused)	Every plan (BM25 full-text plus vector)
Backups	Standard and up, scheduled; collection snapshots on every plan	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; ISO 27001 not stated	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	From Standard; BAA scope through Solutions Engineering	Premium Dedicated, through sales	Business Critical, through sales
EU regions	AWS Frankfurt and Ireland, GCP Frankfurt, Azure Germany West Central	Region selection on Dedicated tiers; EU regions not named	Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions
SSO	Premium (console sign-in)	SAML on Premium	SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up
BYOC	Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud, through sales	Named on the security page; through sales	Through sales, annual commitment
Data export	Downloadable snapshots; scroll API	Cursor API; Parquet export not available on Cloud	SDK iterators; backup file export in private preview
Self-host path	Qdrant open source (Apache 2.0), restore from snapshot	Weaviate open source (BSD-3-Clause; some enterprise features licensed separately)	Milvus (Apache 2.0), same SDKs
Bottom line	From its public pages, Qdrant Cloud is managed open-source Qdrant billed by node-hour: no per-query charge, a large free cluster and a documented way back to self-hosting. Prices live in the calculator, and SSO and private networking need Premium.	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: Qdrant Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; 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 Qdrant Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026
Pick Qdrant Cloud when
You want audit logs on the first paid plan, downloadable snapshots and a lower scenario cost.
Pick Weaviate Cloud when
You want three replicas and backups included without sizing nodes, and ISO 27001.
From our Qdrant Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026
Pick Qdrant Cloud when
You want provisioned nodes in AWS us-east-1 and audit logs without moving to an enterprise plan.
Pick Zilliz Cloud when
You want per-request serverless billing, ISO 27001, bulk import from object storage and SSO on a self-serve plan.
From our Weaviate Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026
Pick Weaviate Cloud when
You want three replicas and backups included without sizing nodes, and ISO 27001.
Pick Qdrant Cloud when
You want an audit log on the first paid plan, downloadable snapshots and a lower scenario cost ($102.51 a month).
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 per-request serverless billing, free import from object storage, ISO 27001 and SSO on a self-serve plan.
Pick Qdrant Cloud when
You want provisioned nodes in AWS us-east-1 at a lower scenario cost ($102.51) and audit logs on the first paid plan.
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.

Qdrant Cloud
Standard
$0.03566/node-hour
Smallest node (2 GiB RAM, 0.5 vCPU, 8 GiB disk) in AWS us-east-1, about $26.10 a month; billed hourly, no minimum
- Nodes up to 256 GiB RAM and 64 vCPU
- Scheduled backups and high-availability setups
- Audit logs on Qdrant 1.17 and later
- AWS, GCP and Azure regions, EU included
Weaviate Cloud
Flex
$45/mo minimum
Pay 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 Cloud
Standard (Serverless)
$4/million vCUs
Plus $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: Qdrant Cloud 2026-10-16, 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 3 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 3 that skip the card (7.2/10).
Lowest starter price: Weaviate Cloud$45/mo minimum for the Flex plan. Qdrant Cloud and Zilliz Cloud list 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

Add a product

Search by product name or by what it does, such as “email” or “feature flags”. 1 more fits in this comparison.