# Vector & Search

> Vector databases and semantic search: dedicated stores like Pinecone, Qdrant, and Weaviate, Postgres-native pgvector, search engines like Elasticsearch and Vespa, and similarity libraries like FAISS. The retrieval foundation under every RAG pipeline. Already on Postgres? Start with pgvector; reach for a dedicated vector database when scale or hybrid search demands it.

12 tools in 3 subcategories. Web page: https://ailandscape.org/category/vector-search · Each tool also has a markdown version at /tool/{slug}.md

## Vector Databases

- [Chroma](https://ailandscape.org/tool/chroma): AI-native open-source embedding database
- [Milvus](https://ailandscape.org/tool/milvus): Open-source vector database built for AI
- [pgvector](https://ailandscape.org/tool/pgvector): Vector similarity search for PostgreSQL
- [Pinecone](https://ailandscape.org/tool/pinecone): Managed vector database for ML applications
- [Qdrant](https://ailandscape.org/tool/qdrant): Vector similarity search engine
- [Weaviate](https://ailandscape.org/tool/weaviate): Open-source vector database with ML integrations

## Semantic Search

- [Elasticsearch](https://ailandscape.org/tool/elasticsearch): Distributed search and analytics engine
- [OpenSearch](https://ailandscape.org/tool/opensearch): Community-driven fork of Elasticsearch
- [Vespa](https://ailandscape.org/tool/vespa): Big data serving engine with ML integration

## Similarity & Indexing

- [Annoy](https://ailandscape.org/tool/annoy): Approximate nearest neighbors by Spotify
- [FAISS](https://ailandscape.org/tool/faiss): Library for efficient similarity search by Meta
- [ScaNN](https://ailandscape.org/tool/scann): Scalable nearest neighbors library by Google

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Part of [AI Landscape](https://ailandscape.org), an open map of the AI ecosystem. Index for AI assistants: https://ailandscape.org/llms.txt