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Developer Tools · head to head

Fig vs LanceDB

F

Fig

Developer Tools

IDE-style autocomplete for your existing terminal

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit FigFull review
LanceDB logo

LanceDB

Databases

Embedded retrieval library over the Apache 2.0 Lance columnar format, with proprietary Cloud and Enterprise tiers for serving at scale.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Visit LanceDBFull review

The short version

  • LanceDB is a library, not a server.
  • Fig is free; LanceDB prices on request.
  • Where Fig falls short: the standalone desktop app is no longer available or supported.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Fig and LanceDB actually diverge.

Attributes where Fig and LanceDB differ
AttributeFigLanceDB
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelFreemiumQuote
Free tierYesNo
CategoryDeveloper ToolsDatabases

Identical on both: platforms (Web).

Not yet recorded: founded for LanceDB.

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Fig

Nothing recorded that LanceDB does not also cover.

Only in LanceDB

  • Embedded operation
  • Lance columnar format
  • Object storage native
  • Multimodal storage
  • Vector indexes
  • Full-text and hybrid search
  • Scalar filtering
  • Dataset versioning

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Fig

No use cases recorded yet. See the Fig review.

LanceDB

  • Retrieval over a dataset that includes images, audio or video, where keeping the embeddings and the source media in one format avoids a second storage systemnot Fig
  • A training and retrieval pipeline that must read the same rows for both purposes without maintaining two copies and a sync jobnot Fig
  • Prototyping search locally with the same code path that later runs against S3, with no local server to installnot Fig
  • Keeping a large, mostly cold vector corpus on object storage rather than paying to hold it in memory in a conventional vector databasenot Fig

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Fig

  • Shut down on 1 September 2024. Amazon acquired Fig in August 2023 and folded it into Amazon Q Developer, which now carries the terminal autocomplete
  • The standalone desktop app is no longer available or supported
  • The completion specs remain open source on GitHub, but the product that consumed them is gone

LanceDB

  • The open source build is a library with no network endpoint, authentication or tenancy model, so exposing it to more than one application means writing your own service in front of it and handing every consumer credentials to the bucket
  • Queries that miss the cache pay object storage round trips, so interactive latency depends on local SSD caching or the Enterprise serving tier rather than on the library itself
  • Concurrent writers to the same dataset coordinate through commits on the object store, so multi-writer setups can conflict and the safe pattern is a single writer per table, which is an architectural constraint on your ingest design
  • Newly written rows are not in the index until the index is rebuilt or updated, and until then they are searched by brute force, so recall and latency drift between reindexing jobs that you have to schedule and pay for
  • The capabilities that make it operable at scale, distributed index building, managed caching and hosted serving, live in the proprietary Cloud and Enterprise tiers, so the open licence protects the data but not the production deployment

Pricing, plan by plan

Fig

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Fig review.

LanceDB

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the LanceDB review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Fig if

  • You want to start without paying.
Fig review

Choose LanceDB if

  • You need embedded operation.
  • You also want lance columnar format.
LanceDB review

Questions people ask

Is Fig or LanceDB better?
Neither clearly leads. Fig starts at Free and LanceDB at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Fig or LanceDB?
Fig has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Fig and On request for LanceDB.
Does Fig or LanceDB run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Fig for free?
Yes. Fig has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. LanceDB starts at On request.
What can Fig do that LanceDB cannot?
LanceDB covers Embedded operation, Lance columnar format, Object storage native, Multimodal storage.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

LanceDB: Is LanceDB open source?

The LanceDB library and the underlying Lance format are Apache 2.0. LanceDB Cloud and LanceDB Enterprise are proprietary managed products built on top of them.

LanceDB: Do I need the managed service?

Not for development or for embedded use in a single application. You typically need it when many clients must query concurrently with predictable latency, or when index builds outgrow one machine.

LanceDB: Can other tools read my data?

Yes. Lance datasets are readable from DuckDB, Polars, Pandas, PyArrow and PyTorch, which is the main practical difference from a vector database that owns its own storage.

LanceDB: How does it compare to pgvector?

pgvector keeps vectors next to relational data in a database you already run. LanceDB keeps them in object storage in a format built for random access and multimodal payloads, and scales storage independently of any server.

LanceDB: What happens to updates and deletes?

Writes append new fragments and mark old rows deleted, with compaction reclaiming space later, so a workload with heavy in-place updates accumulates overhead until compaction runs.

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