IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Data platform › Vector databases › Small business › September 2026 Edition

Vector databases for small business buyers

Asked as “vector database”, and as “vector search database for AI applications”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 56 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
pgvector
Clear leader
46% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businesspgvector46%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketQdrant37%ContestedStanding →EnterprisePinecone53%Clear leaderStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01pgvector46%0%55endorsed leader
02Qdrant30%0%66endorsed leader
03Pinecone16%27%67criticized challenger
04Weaviate4%24%63accepted challenger
05Chroma4%24%33accepted challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
07Milvus0%49%37criticized challenger
06LanceDB0%0%11accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
Qdrant vs pgvectorQdrant vs Pineconepgvector vs Pinecone

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01pgvector46%
02Qdrant30%
03Pinecone16%
04Weaviate4%
05Chroma4%
06LanceDB0%
07Milvus0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Pinecone
27%
18 of 67 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“**Avoid** fully managed premium services like **Pinecone** or **Weaviate Cloud** initially” Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt
Weaviate
24%
15 of 63 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Weaviate adds "batteries-included" features ... but more moving parts mean steeper learning curve and maintenance” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
Milvus
49%
18 of 37 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 7 hard negative
“Small businesses should avoid deploying heavy infrastructure like **Milvus**, **Zilliz**, or standalone **Weaviate** clusters” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Chroma
24%
8 of 33 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid Chroma for anything production; use it only for prototyping.” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

66 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 788 links across 225 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

encore.dev
43 answers · 44 citations · 10 models
firecrawl.dev
40 answers · 40 citations · 10 models
dev.to
25 answers · 27 citations · 8 models
aiopsschool.com
19 answers · 19 citations · 8 models
medium.com
16 answers · 18 citations · 7 models
g2.com
16 answers · 16 citations · 9 models
tensoria.fr
16 answers · 16 citations · 7 models
costbench.com
13 answers · 15 citations · 7 models
pecollective.com
13 answers · 15 citations · 7 models
pinecone.io
vendor site · Pinecone12 answers · 16 citations · 7 models
internative.net
12 answers · 13 citations · 9 models
iternal.ai
12 answers · 12 citations · 5 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

encore.dev/articles/best-vector-databases
43 answers · 10 models
firecrawl.dev/blog/best-vector-databases
40 answers · 10 models
aiopsschool.com/blog/top-10-vector-database-platforms-features-pros-cons-co…
19 answers · 8 models
dev.to/michaelaiglobal/beyond-pinecone-a-developers-deep-dive-into-the-top-…
19 answers · 8 models
g2.com/articles/best-vector-databases
16 answers · 9 models
tensoria.fr/en/blog/vector-database-comparison
16 answers · 7 models
costbench.com/best/vector-databases-for-startups
13 answers · 7 models
internative.net/insights/blog/best-vector-databases-2026-comparison
12 answers · 9 models
iternal.ai/insights/best-vector-databases-2026
12 answers · 5 models
techsy.io/en/blog/best-vector-databases-2026
12 answers · 7 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best vector database for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which vector search database for AI applications would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top vector databases for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best vector database for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a vector database. What should we look at?”Negative“Which vector databases should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Qdrant
Three alternativesLanceDB, Pinecone, Weaviate
Pinecone, WeaviateChanged
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
pgvector
Four alternativesChroma, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Chroma, Qdrant
Three alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
against: Google Cloud Firestore, Vespano first choiceagainst: Pinecone, Weaviate
GPT-5.4 miniPinecone, Qdrant
One alternativeWeaviate
pgvectorChanged
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Pinecone
Four alternativesQdrant, Supabase, Weaviate, pgvector
against: Chroma, Milvuspgvector
One alternativeQdrant
against: Pinecone, Weaviateno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 Flashpgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
pgvectorHeld
Four alternativesMongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
pgvector
Five alternativesLanceDB, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvectorscale
against: Milvuspgvector
Four alternativesChroma, LanceDB, Pinecone, Qdrant
against: Milvus, Weaviatepgvector
Five alternativesChroma, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Milvusagainst: ChromaDB, Elasticsearch, Milvus, OpenSearch, Pinecone, Redis, Vespa, Zilliz Cloud
Perplexity Sonarpgvector
Two alternativesPinecone, Qdrant
QdrantChanged
Four alternativesMilvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant, pgvector
Three alternativesChroma, Pinecone, Weaviate
Qdrant, pgvectoragainst: Pinecone, Weaviateno first choiceagainst: Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
Grok 4.1 Fastpgvector
Two alternativesPinecone, Qdrant
against: Chroma, WeaviateQdrantChanged
Three alternativesPinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
against: ChromaChroma, Pinecone
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
Chroma
Two alternativesQdrant, pgvector
against: Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviatepgvector
Three alternativesChroma, Pinecone, Qdrant
against: Milvus, Zilliz Cloudagainst: Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
Mistral Smallpgvector
Two alternativesPinecone, Weaviate
PineconeChanged
Three alternativesQdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Pinecone, Supabase
Three alternativesQdrant, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant
One alternativePinecone
no first choiceagainst: Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
DeepSeek V4 Flashpgvector
Two alternativesPinecone, Qdrant
against: ChromaDB, MilvuspgvectorHeld
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
pgvector
Four alternativesChromaDB, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Milvus / Zilliz Cloudpgvector
Two alternativesChroma, Qdrant
against: Milvus / Zilliz Cloud, Pineconepgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
against: Milvusagainst: Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone
Llama 4 Maverickpgvector
One alternativeWeaviate
no first choiceChangedPinecone, pgvectorQdrantno first choiceagainst: Pinecone, Weaviate
Qwen 3.7 Flashpgvector
Two alternativesQdrant, Weaviate
against: PineconeQdrant, pgvectorChanged
Two alternativesMilvus, Weaviate
against: PineconeQdrant
Three alternativesChromaDB, Pinecone, pgvector
against: Weaviatepgvector
Two alternativesChroma, Qdrant
against: Pinecone, WeaviatePinecone, Qdrant
Two alternativesWeaviate, pgvector
against: Milvusagainst: FAISS, Microsoft SQL Server, Milvus, MySQL, Pinecone, Weaviate, Zilliz Cloud
Kimi K2pgvector
Two alternativesChroma, Qdrant
Pinecone, pgvectorChanged
One alternativeQdrant
Chroma, Qdrant
Three alternativesPinecone, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant, pgvector
Four alternativesChroma, LanceDB, Milvus, Weaviate
against: PineconePinecone, pgvectoragainst: Chromaagainst: Chroma, FAISS, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate
GLM 4.7 FlashXPinecone, Qdrant, pgvector
Two alternativesChromaDB, Weaviate
against: Milvus / Zilliz CloudQdrantChanged
Two alternativesPinecone, pgvector
against: Chromapgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Qdrant, pgvector
Three alternativesChroma, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Weaviate
against: MilvusPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Four alternativesLanceDB, Milvus, Zilliz Cloud, pgvector
against: Chromaagainst: Elasticsearch, FAISS, Milvus, Solr, Vespa
MiniMax M2.5pgvector
Three alternativesPinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate
Pinecone, QdrantChanged
One alternativepgvector
Pinecone, Qdrant
Three alternativesChromaDB, Weaviate, pgvector
Qdrant
Three alternativesChroma, Pinecone, Weaviate
no first choiceagainst: Pinecone, Weaviate
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:41yes97 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:20yes36 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:24yes1123 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:00yes195 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:06yes3116 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:42yes55 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:36yes1316 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:00yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:40yes937 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:08yes1024 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:49yes1442 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:07yes1024 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:05yes1014 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:36no03 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:51yes822 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:12yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:05yes4217 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:23yes57 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:01yes1729 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:43yes54 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:35yes1048 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:08yes1050 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:08yes2843 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:48yes524 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:51yes911 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:19yes58 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:27yes1823 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:10yes207 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:30yes1812 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:15yes910 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:09yes1320 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:28yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:51yes523 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:35yes1049 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:41yes923 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:12yes1134 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:01no05 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:52yes55 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:49yes620 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:11yes176 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:55yes3115 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:23yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:05yes1015 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:53yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:30yes525 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:35yes922 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:06yes1477 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:50yes535 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:43no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:49no09 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:13no014 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:22yes209 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:13yes1912 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:14no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:18yes2550 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:12yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:25yes1029 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:20yes1017 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:15yes1541 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:33yes530 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:32yes189 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:27yes36 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:43yes1223 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:39yes207 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:38yes3515 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:48yes54 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:17yes2221 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:52yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:59yes537 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:01yes3039 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:08yes2670 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:26yes1029 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
MongoDB Atlas read as MongoDB Atlas Vector Search
Unresolved, counted raw
Solr
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in data platform

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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