Zilliz Cloud review
by Zilliz Inc.Vector databases
Managed Milvus with serverless clusters billed per vCU and dedicated clusters per CU-hour, a free 5 GB cluster and no monthly minimum.
- Free plan
- No card needed
- Self-serve
- Usage-based
- Public prices
What you're paying for
- Saves engineering time (main value)
- Worth the price
Managed Milvus with a serverless option billed per request, free bulk import from object storage, and the Apache 2.0 engine as a way out.
Zilliz Cloud runs Milvus for you in two forms: Serverless, billed per vCU with no minimum and no capacity to size, and Dedicated clusters billed per CU-hour on AWS, GCP and Azure. Bulk import from S3, GCS or Azure Blob is free, the free cluster holds about 1M 768-dimension vectors, and code written with the Milvus SDKs runs against self-hosted Milvus. The trust center lists a SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001:2022.
- Serverless with no minimumServerless clusters bill $4 per million vCUs for reads and writes and $0.30 per GB-month for storage, with no monthly minimum; import and bulk insert "do not incur costs".Evidence: List price guide and serverless cost docs (2026-10-16)
- Free import from object storageData imports from S3, GCS, Azure Blob or other object storage as Parquet, JSON or NumPy files, at no charge.Evidence: Data import docs and serverless cost docs (2026-10-16)
- Milvus underneathThe engine is Milvus under Apache 2.0, and the docs use the Milvus SDKs, so the same client code works against self-hosted Milvus.Evidence: Zilliz vs Milvus page and Milvus GitHub LICENSE (2026-10-16)
- A free cluster and trial creditsThe free cluster holds 5 GB, about 1M 768-dimension vectors, and a work-email sign-up adds $100 in credits for 30 days without payment details.Evidence: Free trial docs (2026-10-16)
- Best for
- Teams that want per-request serverless billing or dedicated clusters on Milvus, with bulk loads from object storage.
- Good to know
- Serverless has no AWS region in the US (only GCP us-west1 and AWS Frankfurt), and backups need a Dedicated cluster.
How Zilliz Cloud compares
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Vector databases: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Zilliz Cloud | Qdrant Cloud | Pinecone | Weaviate Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | 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. | 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 timeA serverless vector index with hybrid search, hosted models, backups and bulk import on a plan bought online, with no servers or replicas to size. | 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. |
| Overall score | 7.2Best | 7.0 | 6.8 | 6.2 |
| Free option | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | No card needed | No card needed | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $4/million vCUs | $0.03566/node-hour | $20/mo | $45/mo minimum |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing unit | Serverless: vCUs and GB-month; Dedicated: CU-hours and GB-month | Provisioned nodes per hour (RAM, vCPU and disk), plus backup storage | Read units, write units and GB-month of storage (serverless) | Vector dimensions, GiB of storage and GiB of backup, for each of 3 replicas |
| Free option | Free 5 GB cluster, no card; $100 trial credits for 30 days | Free 1 GB cluster (about 1M 768-dimension vectors), no card | Starter free tier (2 GB, AWS us-east-1); 21-day Standard trial with $300 in credits | Free cluster (100,000 objects), no card |
| Reference scenario (1M vectors, 1M queries) | $113.28/mo on Serverless (GCP us-west1), computed | $102.51/mo on Standard (3 × mx1 nodes), official calculator | $176.60/mo on Standard, computed | $255/mo on Flex, official calculator |
| Plan minimum | None | None on Standard; Premium minimum not published | Builder $20 flat; Standard $50; Enterprise $500 a month | Flex $45 a month; Premium through sales |
| Hybrid search | Every plan (BM25 full-text plus vector) | Every plan (dense plus sparse or BM25) | Every plan (dense, sparse and full-text indexes) | Every plan (BM25F plus vector, fused) |
| Backups | Dedicated clusters; point-in-time recovery on Business Critical | Standard and up, scheduled; collection snapshots on every plan | Standard and up, scheduled; $0.10 per GB-month | Daily on Flex, kept 7 days; restore through support |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II (under NDA) and ISO 27001:2022 | SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001 not stated | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 (Markdown copy of the security page) |
| HIPAA BAA | Business Critical, through sales | From Standard; BAA scope through Solutions Engineering | Standard add-on $190/mo (6-month minimum); included on Enterprise | Premium Dedicated, through sales |
| EU regions | Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions | AWS Frankfurt and Ireland, GCP Frankfurt, Azure Germany West Central | AWS Ireland and Frankfurt, GCP Netherlands, from Builder | Region selection on Dedicated tiers; EU regions not named |
| SSO | SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up | Premium (console sign-in) | SAML on Standard and Enterprise | SAML on Premium |
| BYOC | Through sales, annual commitment | Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud, through sales | Enterprise only, priced by sales | Named on the security page; through sales |
| Data export | SDK iterators; backup file export in private preview | Downloadable snapshots; scroll API | List and fetch API; no bulk export | Cursor API; Parquet export not available on Cloud |
| Self-host path | Milvus (Apache 2.0), same SDKs | Qdrant open source (Apache 2.0), restore from snapshot | None (Pinecone Local reached end of life on Oct 7, 2026) | Weaviate open source (BSD-3-Clause; some enterprise features licensed separately) |
| Bottom line | 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. | 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, Pinecone puts the most on a self-serve plan here: hybrid search, backups, bulk import, SAML SSO and a HIPAA add-on all on Standard. Query cost grows with namespace size, and there is no open-source engine to fall back on. | 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. |
Evidence: Zilliz Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Qdrant Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Pinecone: 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. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Score
- Pricing clarity
- 3.0 / 10, Fair
- unit prices published; can be bought online; month to month; minimum shown on the pricing page or none; the Standard card says "From $126 /GB/month (Dedicated)", but $126 is one CU of compute a month; the cost docs use $0.248 a CU-hour for Enterprise and $0.031 for audit logs; the list price guide shows $0.273 and $0.034; trial credits are "$200 free credits" in the calculator, $100 plus $100 after adding a payment method in the docs; serverless read vCUs are given only as reference examples, with no formula for the data scanned and returned; the cost of exporting backup files is not published (contact support); the free tier has "Two Collections" on the free-tier page, up to 5 on the pricing page and in the docs; BYOC on Azure: "plans to include Azure soon" in the BYOC FAQ, Azure listed on the same page and in the docs
- Free tier and trial
- 9.0 / 10, Excellent
- free tier: 5 GB storage, 2.5M vCUs a month, up to 5 collections, AWS eu-central-1 or GCP us-west1, holds 1M 768-dimension vectors, hybrid search, paused or deleted when inactive, no card needed, also a 30-day trial with $100 in credits, no card needed
- Price for the reference scenario
- 6.7 / 10, Good
- $113.28/mo on Standard plan, Serverless cluster in GCP us-west1 (Oregon); reads 1M on 1M 1,536-dimension vectors = 25M vCUs (the docs’ reference table) × $4 per million = $100; writes 1M upserts × (7.14 KB × 0.25 vCU per KB + 1 vCU for the replaced entity) = 2.785M vCUs × $4 per million = $11.14; storage 7.14 GB × $0.30 = $2.14; no minimum; Serverless has no AWS US region; assumes the reference table’s read figure, which excludes scalar fields, so 1 KB of metadata may add read vCUs
- Search and data features
- 9.2 / 10, Excellent
- hybrid search on the scenario plan; metadata filtering on the scenario plan; multi-tenancy on the scenario plan; backups on a higher self-serve plan; integrated embedding or reranking on the scenario plan; bulk import from object storage on the scenario plan
- Compliance and deployment
- 6.8 / 10, Good
- SOC 2 Type II on the scenario plan; ISO 27001 on the scenario plan; HIPAA BAA enterprise or through sales only; EU region on the scenario plan (Serverless in AWS eu-central-1; Dedicated also in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions); BYOC enterprise or through sales only; customer-managed keys enterprise or through sales only; private networking on a higher self-serve plan
- Access control and exit
- 8.6 / 10, Excellent
- SSO on a higher self-serve plan; RBAC or scoped keys on the scenario plan; audit log on a higher self-serve plan; full export documented; open-source engine (Milvus, Apache 2.0)
Review
Review from public pages
Written from Zilliz Cloud's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 16, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
What the public pages show
We read Zilliz's pricing page with its plan table, the list price guide (rendered in a browser with AWS us-east-1 selected), the BYOC page, the trust center pages for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR, the terms and conditions, the brand page and about fifty docs pages on cost, limits, regions, backups, import, export, security and billing on Oct 16, 2026; we did not sign up or call the API. The pages served US dollars from our location.
Serverless pricing is short ($4 per million vCUs, $0.30 per GB-month), but a read's vCUs depend on the data scanned and returned, and the docs give reference figures rather than a formula: 1M reads on 1M 1,536-dimension vectors use 25M vCUs, excluding scalar fields. Serverless is not offered in any AWS US region; the guide shows it in GCP us-west1 and AWS eu-central-1.
Some figures differ between pages. The Standard card says "From $126 /GB/month (Dedicated)", but $126 is one CU of compute a month; the cost docs use $0.248 a CU-hour for Enterprise where the list price guide shows $0.273; and the calculator offers "$200 free credits" where the docs describe $100, plus $100 more after adding a payment method. The terms are dated April 28, 2023, and we found no public DPA.
Strengths
- Per-request serverless with no minimum
Serverless bills only the vCUs and storage you use, with no monthly minimum, from the Standard plan.
vs Pinecone: Pinecone’s Standard plan has a $50 monthly minimum and turbopuffer’s launch plan $16.
- Free import from object storage
Bulk import from S3, GCS or Azure Blob is free on every plan: up to 1 GB per request on Free, and up to 1 TB per import on Serverless and Dedicated.
vs Weaviate Cloud: Weaviate Cloud and Qdrant Cloud document no import from object storage into their managed services.
- Open-source Milvus as the exit
The engine is Milvus (Apache 2.0) and the SDKs are Milvus SDKs, so self-hosting the same API is possible.
vs Pinecone: Pinecone has no open-source engine.
- SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001
The trust center lists a SOC 2 Type II report (on request under NDA) covering Free, Serverless, Dedicated and BYOC, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification audited by BSI.
vs Qdrant Cloud: Qdrant Cloud and turbopuffer do not state ISO 27001.
Things to know
- Serverless has no US AWS region
Free and Serverless run only in AWS eu-central-1 and GCP us-west1; AWS us-east-1 needs a Dedicated cluster, from $0.175 per CU-hour.
- Read cost depends on data scanned
Each serverless read scans the whole collection unless a partition key narrows it, and its vCUs grow with the fields returned; the docs give a 6-vCU minimum per read and publish reference examples, not a formula.
Workaround: A partition key filter limits the scan to matching partitions.
- Backups need Dedicated
Backups are available only on Dedicated clusters; point-in-time recovery and cross-region backup are on Business Critical, selected through sales.
- Enterprise controls start on Enterprise
SAML or OIDC SSO, audit logs ($0.034 per CU-hour) and private endpoints start on Enterprise; HIPAA and customer-managed keys (AWS only) are on Business Critical.
Pricing reality
Zilliz Cloud bills Serverless clusters $4 per million vCUs and $0.30 per GB-month of storage, and Dedicated clusters per CU-hour ($0.175 Standard, $0.273 Enterprise, $0.41 Business Critical in AWS us-east-1) plus $0.025 per GB-month. For our scenario on Serverless in GCP us-west1: 1M reads use about 25M vCUs ($100, from the docs’ reference table, excluding metadata), 1M upserts use 0.25 vCU per KB inserted plus 1 vCU per replaced entity, 2.785M vCUs ($11.14), and storage is $2.14: $113.28 a month (computed). One Standard Dedicated CU in us-east-1 is about $126 a month. Costs rise with collection size, returned fields, replicas, audit logs and egress beyond 100 GB.
Exit path
Data leaves through the Python and Java SDK iterators, which page through a collection; the RESTful API has no iterator export. Exporting backup files to object storage is a private preview for Enterprise Dedicated clusters, priced through support. Self-hosted Milvus (Apache 2.0) uses the same SDKs, though the docs describe migrations into Zilliz Cloud, not out of it. Deleted clusters stay in a recycle bin for 30 days; the terms say fees are non-refundable.
Compared with
- 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.
- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want no monthly minimum, an open-source engine behind the service and a lower scenario cost ($113.28 against $176.60).
- Pick Pinecone when
- You want serverless in AWS us-east-1, backups on the serverless plan and a HIPAA add-on bought online.
- 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.
Choose it if
- You want serverless billing with no monthly minimum, or dedicated clusters on Milvus.
- You load data in bulk from S3, GCS or Azure Blob.
- You want the option to self-host Milvus with the same SDKs.
Look elsewhere if
- You need serverless in an AWS US region.
- You need a HIPAA BAA without a sales-led plan.
Bottom line
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.
Plan limits at a glance
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Billing unit | Serverless: vCUs and GB-month; Dedicated: CU-hours and GB-month |
| Free option | Free 5 GB cluster, no card; $100 trial credits for 30 days |
| Reference scenario (1M vectors, 1M queries) | $113.28/mo on Serverless (GCP us-west1), computed |
| Plan minimum | None |
| Hybrid search | Every plan (BM25 full-text plus vector) |
| Backups | Dedicated clusters; point-in-time recovery on Business Critical |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II (under NDA) and ISO 27001:2022 |
| HIPAA BAA | Business Critical, through sales |
| EU regions | Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions |
| SSO | SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up |
| BYOC | Through sales, annual commitment |
| Data export | SDK iterators; backup file export in private preview |
| Self-host path | Milvus (Apache 2.0), same SDKs |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 16, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Zilliz Cloud yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 16, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Zilliz Cloud yet.
Zilliz Cloud lists 5 plans. The cheapest paid plan, Standard, Serverless cluster, costs $4/million vCUs.
- Zilliz CloudFreeFree$0/moOne free cluster per organization; suspended after 7 days without activity, resumable
- 5 GB storage, about 1M 768-dimension vectors
- 2.5M vCUs a month, up to 5 collections
- AWS eu-central-1 or GCP us-west1
- No backups or API key management
- 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
- Zilliz CloudStandard (Dedicated)$0.175/CU-hourAWS us-east-1, Performance- or Capacity-optimized, about $126 per CU-month; storage $0.025 per GB-month
- Manual scaling up to 32 CUs
- Backup and restore
- Cluster IP allowlist
- Single availability zone
- Zilliz CloudEnterprise (Dedicated)$0.273/CU-hourAWS us-east-1, about $197 per CU-month
- Replicas, multiple availability zones and auto-scaling
- SAML or OIDC SSO and SCIM
- Private endpoints
- Audit logs at $0.034 per CU-hour
- Zilliz CloudBusiness Critical$0.41/CU-hourList price published; selected through sales
- HIPAA BAA
- Customer-managed keys (AWS only)
- Point-in-time recovery and cross-region backup
- Global clusters
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-16.
Source: zilliz.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.