Alternatives
Products that do what SimpleVecDB does
Dead-simple local vector database powered by sqlite-vec.
- 1HO
Hey HN, we want to share HelixDB (https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/), a project a college friend and I are working on. It’s a new database that natively intertwines graph and vector types, without sacrificing performance. It’s written in Rust and our initial focus is on supporting RAG. Here’s a video runthrough: https://screen.studio/share/szgQu3yq. Why a hybrid? Vector databases are useful for similarity queries, while graph databases are useful for relationship queries. Each stores data in a way that’s best for its main type of query (e.g.…
2025 · github.com
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We have been using graph DBs more and more at work. I found them painful to work with locally and decided to try and build something better.
13d ago · github.com
- 3GI
2016 · github.com
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- 5ZT
Zvec is a lightweight, SQLite-like embedded vector database purpose-built for edge and on-device workloads. It delivers four core advantages: out-of-the-box usability, configurable resource budgets, extreme performance, and versatile vector capabilities. Open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license, Zvec aims to provide developers with a one-stop path from prototyping to production deployment on the edge. Try Zvec—we’re excited to see your adoption, feedback, and contributions. For a more detailed introduction, you can refer to https://zvec.org/en/blog/introduction/
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 6IW
I wrote a relational database management system (RDBMS) (sqlite clone) from scratch in pure Python.
2023 · github.com
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- 8WW
2022 · github.com
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- 10VA
Hi HN, I built VectorDBZ, a cross-platform desktop app for exploring and analyzing vector databases like Qdrant, Weaviate, Milvus, and ChromaDB. It lets you browse collections, inspect vectors and metadata, run similarity searches, and visualize embeddings without writing custom scripts. GitHub (downloads and issues): https://github.com/vectordbz/vectordbz Feedback welcome. If it’s useful, starring the repo helps keep me motivated. Thanks.
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 11VA
I built [VectorLiteDB (https://github.com/vectorlitedb/vectorlitedb) — a simple, embedded vector database that stores everything in a single file, just like SQLite. The problem: If you’re a developer building AI apps, you usually have two choices for vector search - Set up a server (e.g. Chroma, Weaviate) - Use a cloud service (e.g. Pinecone) That works for production, but it’s overkill when you just want to: - Quickly prototype with embeddings - Run offline without cloud dependencies - Keep your data portable in a single file The inspiration was *SQLite* during…
Sep 2025 · github.com
- 122F
2023 · github.com
- 13AB
We recently benchmarked AnuDB, a lightweight embedded database built on top of RocksDB, against SQLite on a Raspberry Pi. The performance difference, especially for parallel operations, was dramatic. GitHub Links: AnuDBBenchmark: https://github.com/hash-anu/AnuDBBenchmark AnuDB (Core): https://github.com/hash-anu/AnuDB Why Compare AnuDB and SQLite? SQLite is excellent for many embedded use cases — it’s simple, battle-tested, and extremely reliable. But it doesn't scale well when parallelism or concurrent writes are required. AnuDB, built over RocksDB,…
2025 · github.com
- 14DS
Hello HN! I'm building mvsqlite, a distributed variant of SQLite with MVCC transactions, that runs on FoundationDB. It is a drop-in replacement that just needs an `LD_PRELOAD` for existing applications using SQLite. I made this because Blueboat (https://github.com/losfair/blueboat) needs a native SQL interface to persistent data. Apparently, just providing a transactional key-value store isn’t enough - it is more easy and efficient to build complex business logic on an SQL database, and it seems necessary to bring a self-hostable distributed SQL DB onto the platform.…
2022 · github.com
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- 16TA
2024 · github.com
- 17CH
Hi HN! We're thrilled to share CozoDB v0.6, a monumental update to our FOSS database, which already unifies relational and graph features. With the addition of vector search, CozoDB becomes an even better companion for LLMs like ChatGPT. This release introduces vector search using HNSW indices within Datalog, enabling seamless integration with powerful features such as ad-hoc joins, recursive Datalog, and classical whole-graph algorithms. This update significantly broadens CozoDB's capabilities. Check out the linked release note for an in-depth look at the new features, comparisons to other…
2023 · docs.cozodb.org
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- 19EO
Hey HN! We are building Epsilla (https://github.com/epsilla-cloud/vectordb), an open-source, self-hostable vector database for semantic similarity search that specializes in low query latency. When do we need a vector database? For example, GPT-3.5 has a 16k context window limit. If we want to let it answer a question about a 300 page book, we cannot put the whole book content into the context. We have to choose the sections of the book that are most relevant to the question. Vector database is specialized at ranking and picking the most relevant content from a large pool…
2023 · github.com
- 20ES
Hi HN, I built EdgeVec, a vector database that runs entirely in the browser. It implements HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) graphs for approximate nearest neighbor search. Performance: - Sub-millisecond search at 100k vectors (768 dimensions, k=10) - 148 KB gzipped bundle - 3.6x memory reduction with scalar quantization Use cases: browser extensions with semantic search, local-first apps, privacy-preserving RAG. Technical: Written in Rust, compiled to WASM. Uses AVX2 SIMD on native, simd128 on WASM. IndexedDB for browser persistence. npm:…
Dec 2025 · github.com
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- 23VA
Hey HN, My friend Sam and I were bored one weekend, and wanted to make something self-contained but still useful. We ended up with Victor [0], a vector database designed to run in the browser. It’s written in Rust, which gives us access to things like super-fast and compact serialization and deserialization, but it’s compiled to WASM and uses web-sys to interact with the browser’s JS APIs to write the database contents to disk. We worked hard on designing it in a way that makes sense for the browser. It uses the private origin file system [1] and stores the vectors in a compact format (one…
2023 · github.com
- 24HN
Hey HN! We're college friends building HelixDB. It's a database that natively supports both graph and vector types. It’s designed for AI-driven apps like RAG, vector search, code indexing, and agent frameworks where you need both explicit relationships and similarity. We came up with the idea for Helix at university, while building a graph database as a side project in Rust. Reading some research papers on RAG setups, I realised there was a lot of infrastructure setup to get started. You need your own server, a graph database, a vector database and then some bespoke middleman software to…
2025 · github.com
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