Zilliz Cloud

What is Zilliz Cloud?

Zilliz Cloud is a managed vector database service for AI and machine learning workloads such as semantic search and retrieval. You choose SaaS or BYOC (bring your own cloud), then a project plan: Standard for prototypes and test environments, Enterprise for production applications with a 99.95% uptime SLA, and Business Critical for regulated, mission-critical systems with CMEK and HIPAA-eligible options. Clusters come as a free cluster, serverless clusters that bill by read and write operations, and dedicated clusters measured in compute units (CUs), with performance-optimized, capacity-optimized and tiered-storage types. A newer On-demand Compute option runs search and indexing jobs on zero-copy external data and charges only for active runtime. Search types include vector, filtered, hybrid and full-text search, with SDKs for Python, Java, Go and Node.js. The free cluster includes 5 GB of capacity; paid dedicated compute is listed per CU-hour.

Use cases

• Store and search embeddings for RAG applications
• Run semantic search over product or document data
• Combine vector and full-text hybrid search
• Run lake-scale indexing jobs on external data
• Migrate a vector database from an external source
• Deploy vector search in your own cloud with BYOC
• Prototype on a free cluster before moving to production

Who it's for

• AI engineers
• Backend developers
• Data teams
• Enterprise platform teams

Why use Zilliz Cloud

• A free cluster lets you build and test before committing to a paid plan.
• Dedicated clusters give predictable performance, with prices listed per CU-hour.
• BYOC lets organizations keep the data plane in their own cloud account while using the same features as Business Critical.
• On-demand Compute avoids always-on cost for batch search and indexing jobs.
• Plans scale from prototype to regulated workloads with SLAs, CMEK and HIPAA-eligible options.

Zilliz Cloud features

• Free, serverless and dedicated cluster options
• Performance-optimized, capacity-optimized and tiered-storage dedicated clusters
• Vector, filtered, range, grouping, hybrid and full-text search
• On-demand Compute for lake-scale jobs on zero-copy external data
• Python, Java, Go and Node.js SDKs plus RESTful APIs
• Deployment on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure
• RBAC, SSO, audit logs and customer-managed encryption keys on higher plans
• Private endpoints, VPC peering and IP allowlists
• SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 compliance, GDPR ready, HIPAA ready
• Metrics, alerts and observability integrations such as Datadog and Prometheus

Zilliz Cloud integrations

• AWS
• Google Cloud
• Azure
• Datadog
• Prometheus
• AWS S3
• Google Cloud Storage
• Azure Blob Storage

How to get started with Zilliz Cloud

1. Create an organization and project, and decide between SaaS and BYOC.
2. Pick a plan and a cluster type: free, serverless or dedicated.
3. Create a collection, load vectors with an SDK or high-speed import, and build indexes.
4. Query with vector, filtered or hybrid search from your application.
5. Watch metrics and the cost estimate, and resize or suspend clusters as workloads change.

Zilliz Cloud limitations

• The free cluster is limited to 1 per organization, with 5 GB capacity and up to 5 collections
• Standard plan has no uptime SLA listed; Azure is not available on shared plans
• Storage charges continue when a cluster is suspended
• Data transfer, backup storage and audit logs are billed separately from compute
• Business Critical is selected by contacting sales

Zilliz Cloud pricing

Yes, Zilliz Cloud has a free plan.

Zilliz Cloud plans

• Free

  Free

  1 free cluster per organization

  • 5 GB capacity
  • Up to 2.5 million vCUs per month
  • Up to 5 collections

• Standard

  Price on vendor site

  • For prototypes and testing environments
  • Shared or dedicated clusters
  • Non-critical workloads

• Enterprise

  Price on vendor site

  • 99.95% uptime SLA
  • Audit logs, SSO and granular RBAC
  • Private endpoint and VPC peering
  • Enterprise support included

• Business Critical

  Custom

  contact sales

  • Global cluster
  • CMEK and full-path encryption in transit
  • HIPAA-eligible
  • Priority support

• Dedicated compute

  $0.273 /CU /hour

  performance- and capacity-optimized

  • Storage $0.025 / GB / month
  • Security add-on $0.034 / CU / hour

• Tiered-storage compute

  $0.41 /CU /hour

  dedicated clusters

  • For ultra-large-scale, cost-sensitive workloads

• On-demand Compute

  $0.41 /CU /hour

  billed by CU-minute

  • Zero-copy access to external data
  • Pay only for active job runtime

Plans as listed on the official pricing page on 24 Oct 2026. Prices can change and may vary by country or exclude tax. Check the official pricing page.

Zilliz Cloud alternatives

The main Zilliz Cloud alternatives listed on Debuly are Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Chroma, LanceDB and Baseplate. The table compares pricing and platforms; order is A–Z.

1. Ba

   Baseplate

   Backend for LLM apps: a hybrid database for data and embeddings, search, an app builder and API endpoints

   Developer platformsAutomation and agents
   FreemiumVisit Baseplate (official site)
2. 

   Chroma

   Open-source search database for AI apps, with vector, full-text, regex and metadata search and a serverless cloud option.

   Developer platformsResearch and searchAutomation and agents
   Open sourceVisit Chroma (official site)
3. 

   LanceDB

   Open-source vector database and multimodal lakehouse for AI search, retrieval, feature engineering and training data.

   Developer platformsResearch and search
   Open sourceVisit LanceDB (official site)
4. 

   Pinecone

   Managed vector database for AI search and RAG, with dense, sparse and full-text indexes, inference and an Assistant API.

   Developer platformsResearch and search
   FreemiumVisit Pinecone (official site)
5. 

   Qdrant

   An open-source vector database and search engine for AI workloads, available self-hosted or as Qdrant Cloud with a free tier.

   Developer platformsResearch and searchAutomation and agents
   FreemiumVisit Qdrant (official site)
6. 

   Weaviate

   Open-source vector database with hybrid search and a managed Weaviate Cloud for semantic search, RAG and recommendations.

   Developer platformsResearch and search
   FreemiumVisit Weaviate (official site)

Zilliz Cloud FAQ

Sources & verification

Facts on this page come from the official sources below, each with the date we read it. Written by Debuly; the vendor did not review this page.

Image credits

• Logo: from zilliz.com · fetched 24 Oct 2026 · Vendor trademark, used only to identify the product; removed on request
• Cover: none collected yet, so a generated tile is shown.

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