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Vespa vs Weaviate

A side-by-side comparison of Vespa and Weaviate, two Vector DB tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.

Compared from listings verified as of

Vespa

Vector DB

Open-source serving engine for vector, lexical, and structured search at scale.

View Vespa

Weaviate

Vector DB

Open-source vector database with built-in vectorisers.

View Weaviate

At a glance

Feature comparison of Vespa and Weaviate
AttributeVespaWeaviate
CategoryVector DBVector DB
PricingFREEMIUMFREEMIUM
LicenseOpen coreOpen core
DeploymentHybridHybrid
Platforms (differs)API, CLI, LinuxAPI
Model supportModel-agnosticModel-agnostic
Vendor (differs)Vespa.aiWeaviate

The honest brief

Vespa

Combines vector, lexical and structured search plus ML inference in one query, distributed across nodes at web scale.

  • Vector + lexical + structured in one query
  • Battle-tested at Yahoo scale
  • Apache-2.0, fully self-hostable
  • In-engine ML model inference
  • Vespa Cloud Enclave runs in your VPC
  • Steep learning curve
  • Operationally heavy to self-host
  • Overkill for simple vector search
  • Smaller community than Elastic

Weaviate

Built-in vectorizer modules embed text inline — raw text in, vectors out — so you skip running a separate embedding pipeline.

  • Hybrid BM25 + vector search
  • Self-hostable or managed cloud
  • GraphQL and REST APIs
  • Resource-heavy at large scale
  • Module config has a learning curve
  • Managed tier costs add up
  • Newer than some lexical engines
Vespa detailsWeaviate detailsAll Vector DB apps