MarketsandMarkets puts the vector database market at $2,652.1 million for 2025, yet its public summary assigns no share to Pinecone, Weaviate, or Milvus. This guide measures Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Milvus market share through the proxies that do exist: DB-Engines popularity, Stack Overflow usage, GitHub activity, company-reported customers, and funding.
Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Milvus Market Share
Does Anyone Publish Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Milvus Market Share?
Not in revenue terms. MarketsandMarkets’ December 2025 report summary names Elastic, Alibaba Cloud, MongoDB, Redis, and SingleStore as leading vector database companies, with no share figures for the three.
Source: MarketsandMarkets, Vector Database Market (report TC 8828), December 2025
The three vendors are privately held. Share questions therefore fall back on proxies, and each proxy measures something different.
DB-Engines scores popularity from web mentions, search interest, technical discussions, job offers, and professional profiles. Its method page states that the ranking does not measure installations or use within IT systems.
Source: DB-Engines, Method of calculating the scores, accessed October 2026
Stack Overflow’s survey captures self-reported use among opt-in respondents. GitHub stars capture developer bookmarks, and DB-Engines lists Pinecone as a commercial, cloud-based system with no open-source repository to compare.
Source: DB-Engines, Milvus vs. Pinecone vs. Weaviate system properties, accessed October 2026
Popularity Scores Put Pinecone at 8.63, Milvus at 6.37
Pinecone scored 8.63 in DB-Engines’ June 2026 vector DBMS ranking, 13th of 36 listed systems. Milvus placed 15th at 6.37, and Weaviate 19th at 4.55.
The three scored 7.07, 4.70, and 3.73 in November 2025, then 7.95, 5.00, and 4.18 in December 2025.
Against June 2025, DB-Engines lists gains of 4.75 points for Pinecone, 3.35 for Milvus, and 2.74 for Weaviate. Qdrant, a fourth pure vector database, sits between Milvus and Weaviate at 5.58.
| System | Rank (of 36) | Score, Jun 2026 | Change vs May 2026 | Change vs Jun 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pinecone | 13 | 8.63 | +0.29 | +4.75 |
| Milvus | 15 | 6.37 | +0.04 | +3.35 |
| Qdrant | 17 | 5.58 | +0.42 | +3.16 |
| Weaviate | 19 | 4.55 | +0.31 | +2.74 |
| Chroma | 23 | 2.96 | +0.07 | +1.03 |
Source: DB-Engines Ranking of Vector DBMS (including secondary database models), June 2026; November and December 2025 scores from earlier releases of the same ranking
How Do Multi-Model Databases Compare on DB-Engines?
PostgreSQL scored 688.23, MongoDB 387.97, and Redis 150.02 in the same June 2026 list. Each carries vector search as a secondary database model.
Source: DB-Engines Ranking of Vector DBMS, June 2026
Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Milvus Usage Among AI Agent Developers
Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey asked agent builders which tools they used for agent memory or data management. Of 3,398 respondents, 11.2% chose Pinecone, 5.2% Milvus, and 4.5% Weaviate.
Respondents could pick several tools, so shares overlap and do not total 100%. The survey is opt-in and describes its respondents, not all developers.
| Tool | Share of respondents, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Redis | 42.9% |
| GitHub MCP Server | 42.8% |
| supabase | 20.9% |
| ChromaDB | 19.7% |
| pgvector | 17.9% |
| Neo4j | 12.3% |
| Pinecone | 11.2% |
| Qdrant | 8.2% |
| Milvus | 5.2% |
| Weaviate | 4.5% |
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, AI agent data storage tools (n = 3,398)
The 2026 survey reworded the question to cover agent memory or vector databases. Its published results (n = 1,392) show nine tools led by Mem0 at 20.0%, and none of the three vendors appears.
Pinecone, Milvus, and Weaviate are also absent from the 2026 general database list (n = 12,061), where PostgreSQL leads at 57.9%.
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, published October 2026
What Is the Vector Database Market Worth?
| Report edition | Base-year value | Forecast value | CAGR |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 2025 (TC 8828) | USD 2,652.1 million (2025) | USD 8,945.7 million (2030) | 27.5% |
| Earlier edition | USD 1.5 billion (2023) | USD 4.3 billion (2028) | 23.3% |
Source: MarketsandMarkets, Vector Database Market reports, December 2025 edition and earlier edition
These are revenue estimates under MarketsandMarkets’ own scope, which covers vector generation and indexing, search and query processing, and storage and retrieval. The 2030 value is the firm’s projection.
Weaviate, citing Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for Cloud DBMS, reported that the nonrelational DBMS segment grew 22.7% in 2024, more than double the relational segment’s rate.
Source: Weaviate press release, January 13, 2026
Customer Counts Reported by Pinecone and Zilliz
Pinecone’s press-release boilerplate went from more than 5,000 customers in September 2025 to more than 10,000 customers and 1M developers in August 2026. These are company statements, not audited counts.
| Release date | Customers stated | Developers stated |
|---|---|---|
| September 8, 2025 | More than 5,000 | Not stated |
| May 5, 2026 | More than 9,000 | 800,000 |
| August 6, 2026 | More than 10,000 | 1M |
Source: Pinecone press releases, September 8, 2025; May 5, 2026; August 6, 2026
Zilliz, the company behind Milvus, said in July 2026 that it supports more than 10,000 enterprises and AI-native companies.
Source: Zilliz newsroom, Milvus 3.0 announcement, July 2026
Weaviate’s 2026 press releases reviewed for this article give no customer count. Its latest adoption figure found was 2 million-plus open-source downloads, reported in April 2023, and downloads are not users.
Source: Weaviate Series B press release, April 21, 2023
Pinecone’s Revenue Mix One Year After Its CEO Change
Annual commitments make up about 40% of Pinecone’s revenue, up from about 25% three quarters earlier, CEO Ash Ashutosh wrote on August 26, 2026.
He also reported Serverless Database retention above 130% and committed backlog growth of more than 60% since the start of 2026.
Ashutosh took over as CEO from founder Edo Liberty on September 8, 2025. In the August post, he said Liberty is stepping back from day-to-day duties while remaining a shareholder and board member.
Source: Pinecone blog, August 26, 2026; Pinecone newsroom, September 8, 2025
Milvus Holds 46.0k GitHub Stars, Weaviate 16.8k
Milvus and Weaviate publish their database code on GitHub. Milvus sits under the LF AI & Data Foundation with an Apache 2.0 license, and Weaviate uses BSD-3-Clause.
| Repository | Stars | Forks | Watching | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| milvus-io/milvus | 46.0k | 4.2k | 339 | Apache-2.0 |
| weaviate/weaviate | 16.8k | 1.4k | 140 | BSD-3-Clause |
Source: GitHub repository pages, September 2026
Zilliz’s July 2026 release cited more than 45,000 stars and over 100 million Docker pulls for Milvus. Docker pulls count image downloads, not users or deployments.
Back in August 2022, Zilliz reported over 11,000 Milvus stargazers.
Source: Zilliz press releases, August 24, 2022 and July 2026
How Much Funding Have Pinecone, Weaviate and Milvus Raised?
Pinecone raised a $100 million Series B at a $750 million valuation in April 2023, led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Source: Pinecone newsroom, April 2023
Weaviate announced a $50 million Series B led by Index Ventures on April 21, 2023.
Source: Weaviate press release via PR Newswire, April 21, 2023
Zilliz closed a $60 million Series B extension on August 24, 2022, taking total investment to $113 million.
Source: Zilliz newsroom, August 24, 2022
None of the 2026 press releases from the three companies reviewed for this article announces a new funding round.
FAQs
Which has the largest market share: Pinecone, Weaviate or Milvus?
Public reports reviewed here do not split vector database revenue by vendor. On DB-Engines’ June 2026 popularity scores, Pinecone (8.63) leads Milvus (6.37) and Weaviate (4.55). DB-Engines measures popularity, not installations or revenue.
Is Milvus more popular than Pinecone?
It depends on the metric. Milvus has 46.0k GitHub stars (September 2026), while Pinecone is closed source. Pinecone leads on DB-Engines (8.63 vs 6.37, June 2026) and Stack Overflow’s 2025 agent-builder usage (11.2% vs 5.2%).
Is Pinecone open source?
No. DB-Engines lists Pinecone as a commercial, cloud-based database. Milvus is open source under Apache 2.0 within the LF AI & Data Foundation, and Weaviate uses the BSD-3-Clause license.
How many customers does Pinecone have?
More than 10,000 customers and 1M developers, according to Pinecone’s August 6, 2026 press release. Its September 2025 release cited more than 5,000 customers.
Do Reddit discussions show the real Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Milvus market share?
No. Reddit threads are anecdotal, not sampled data. Published proxies include DB-Engines popularity scores and Stack Overflow’s opt-in survey, where Pinecone, Milvus and Weaviate drew 11.2%, 5.2% and 4.5% of 2025 agent-builder respondents.
References
https://db-engines.com/en/ranking/vector+dbms/all
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/ai/
https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/size-and-share-of-vector-database-market.asp
