PostgreSQL pgvector vs. Pinecone and Qdrant: A 10-Million Vector Production Benchmark

Do you really need a dedicated, expensive vector database like Pinecone or Qdrant, or can PostgreSQL with pgvector and HNSW index 10 million vectors with sub-20ms latency? Here are the benchmarks, cost breakdowns, and production lessons.

Written and maintained by Hassan Nazir, Forward Deployed Engineer and Applied AI practitioner.