# The best free vector databases and RAG infrastructure

Every option in the catalog for when you need to store embeddings and retrieve them for a RAG app — 10 vector databases and RAG infrastructure, 10 of them free or freemium, with the pricing tier printed on every row.

## Stats

- 10 tools listed
- 10 free or freemium
- 6 with no paid plan at all
- 1 sub-categories covered

## FAQ

### What are the best free vector databases and RAG infrastructure?

Flocci AI Tools lists 10 of them, ordered free tiers first: Vespa, LanceDB, Microsoft GraphRAG, Milvus and pgvector. Every one of them is free or has a free tier. Each entry states what it uniquely does rather than a score.

### Which of these are completely free?

6 on this page are marked fully free with no paid plan at all: Vespa, LanceDB, Microsoft GraphRAG, Milvus and pgvector. The remaining 4 are freemium, trial or paid, and each is labelled with its exact tier so nothing surprises you at sign-up.

### How is this list ordered?

Free tools first, then freemium, then trial, then paid, and alphabetically inside each tier. Nobody pays to appear higher: Flocci AI Tools carries no ads, no sponsored slots and no paid listings, so the order reflects price and nothing else.

## Quick picks

### Which vector databases and RAG infrastructure work in a browser with no install?

Vespa, Chroma, Pinecone, Qdrant and Weaviate all work in a browser tab with no install needed — just open the site and go. 5 of the 10 free vector databases and RAG infrastructure listed here are browser-based.

### Which vector databases and RAG infrastructure let you sign in with Google?

Chroma, Pinecone and Qdrant support Google sign-in, so you can start without creating a new account. That's 3 of the 10 free vector databases and RAG infrastructure on this page.

### Which vector databases and RAG infrastructure can you self-host or run offline?

LanceDB, Microsoft GraphRAG, Milvus, pgvector and txtai can be self-hosted or run locally without a browser — useful for privacy, air-gapped networks, or avoiding API rate limits. 5 of the 10 free vector databases and RAG infrastructure here run offline.

## Tools

- [Vespa](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/vespa) — Free — Open-source AI search platform combining vector, text and structured search
- [LanceDB](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/lancedb) — Free — Embedded, developer-friendly retrieval library for multimodal AI
- [Microsoft GraphRAG](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/microsoft-graphrag) — Free — Builds knowledge graphs and community summaries from private text for RAG
- [Milvus](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/milvus) — Free — Cloud-native Apache-2.0 vector database for large-scale similarity search
- [pgvector](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/pgvector) — Free — Open-source vector similarity search extension for Postgres
- [txtai](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/txtai) — Free — All-in-one embeddings database for semantic search, LLM orchestration and workflows
- [Chroma](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/chroma) — Freemium — Fully open-source embedded/self-hosted vector store, the default choice bundled into countless RAG tutorials and frameworks
- [Pinecone](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/pinecone) — Freemium — Fully managed vector database with a free Starter plan
- [Qdrant](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/qdrant) — Freemium — Open-source Rust-based vector database, self-hostable for free with no scale limit
- [Weaviate](https://aitools.flocci.in/tool/weaviate) — Freemium — Free managed cloud plan (100k objects, 1GB memory, 10GB disk) to explore without self-hosting
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Source: Flocci AI Tools — https://aitools.flocci.in/best/best-vector-databases-rag-infra

Facts last verified: October 2026