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Databases · head to head

turbopuffer vs Vitess

turbopuffer logo

turbopuffer

Databases

Closed-source vector and full-text search service built directly on object storage, with cold queries measured in seconds rather than milliseconds.

From
$16/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Vitess logo

Vitess

Databases

Scalable database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Vitess has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: turbopuffer a cold namespace pays object storage latency on the first query, with a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents, so any interactive search box needs the data kept warm or the user waits about a second.; Vitess vTGate scatter queries without sharding key incur significant performance penalties
  • They diverge on capability: turbopuffer covers Object storage architecture, Vitess covers Horizontal Sharding.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which turbopuffer and Vitess actually diverge.

Attributes where turbopuffer and Vitess differ
AttributeturbopufferVitess
Starting price$16/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionUnknown
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWebLinux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes
FoundedUnknown2010

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

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 turbopuffer

  • Object storage architecture
  • Namespaces
  • Vector search
  • Full-text search
  • Attribute filtering
  • Documented limits
  • Configurable consistency
  • Durable writes

Only in Vitess

  • Horizontal Sharding
  • Connection Pooling
  • Query Routing
  • Online Schema Changes
  • Shard Management
  • Replication Management
  • Automated Failover
  • MySQL

What people use each for

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

turbopuffer

  • A product with one search index per customer and thousands of customers, most of whose data is idle on any given daynot Vitess
  • Very large corpora where holding every vector in memory is the dominant cost and occasional cold-query latency is acceptablenot Vitess
  • Hybrid retrieval combining BM25 and vector search where running and synchronising two separate systems is the problem being solvednot Vitess
  • Retrieval for agent and assistant products where indexes are created and destroyed frequently and per-index overhead must be near zeronot Vitess

Vitess

  • Transaction processingnot turbopuffer
  • Data storagenot turbopuffer
  • Application backendnot turbopuffer
  • Reportingnot turbopuffer
  • Data analyticsnot turbopuffer

Where each one falls short

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

turbopuffer

  • A cold namespace pays object storage latency on the first query, with a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents, so any interactive search box needs the data kept warm or the user waits about a second.
  • Queries are eventually consistent by default, and after roughly 128 MiB of outstanding writes new data is invisible until indexed, which the vendor puts at tens of seconds for small namespaces and tens of minutes for large ones, so a bulk re-index is not immediately queryable.
  • It is closed source with no community edition, so single-tenant or bring-your-own-cloud deployment is a commercial negotiation rather than a deployment choice, and there is no path to running it yourself if the relationship ends.
  • Per-namespace ceilings, roughly 10,000 writes per second, 32 MB/s and 500 million documents per shard, mean a single enormous index has to be sharded across namespaces by your application rather than by the service.
  • It is a search engine, not a database: there are no joins, no cross-document transactions and no SQL, so it sits beside a primary datastore and keeping the two in step is work that belongs to you.

Vitess

  • VTGate scatter queries without sharding key incur significant performance penalties
  • Foreign key constraints not enforced across shards, requiring application-level integrity handling
  • Single primary per keyspace limits multi-region write capabilities
  • Distributed transactions without proper sharding key routing suffer performance degradation

Pricing, plan by plan

turbopuffer

$16/month
  • Launch$16/month
    • All database features
    • Multi-tenancy deployment
    • SOC2 & GDPR-ready DPA
  • Scale$256/month
    • Everything in Launch
    • HIPAA-ready BAA
    • Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Enterprise$4096/month
    • Everything in Scale
    • Single-tenancy & BYOC deployment options
    • Private networking

Vitess

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Vitess review.

Which should you pick?

Choose turbopuffer if

  • You need object storage architecture.
  • You also want namespaces.
turbopuffer review

Choose Vitess if

  • You need horizontal sharding.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes.
  • You also want connection pooling.
Vitess review

Questions people ask

Is turbopuffer or Vitess better?
Neither clearly leads. turbopuffer starts at $16/month and Vitess at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, turbopuffer or Vitess?
Vitess has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $16/month for turbopuffer and Free for Vitess.
Does turbopuffer or Vitess run on more platforms?
turbopuffer runs on Web. Vitess runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes.
Can I use Vitess for free?
Yes. Vitess has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. turbopuffer starts at $16/month.
What is turbopuffer best used for?
turbopuffer is most often used for a product with one search index per customer and thousands of customers, most of whose data is idle on any given day, very large corpora where holding every vector in memory is the dominant cost and occasional cold-query latency is acceptable, hybrid retrieval combining bm25 and vector search where running and synchronising two separate systems is the problem being solved, retrieval for agent and assistant products where indexes are created and destroyed frequently and per-index overhead must be near zero. Of those, a product with one search index per customer and thousands of customers, most of whose data is idle on any given day and very large corpora where holding every vector in memory is the dominant cost and occasional cold-query latency is acceptable are not what Vitess is typically brought in for.
What can turbopuffer do that Vitess cannot?
turbopuffer covers Object storage architecture, Namespaces, Vector search, Full-text search. Vitess covers Horizontal Sharding, Connection Pooling, Query Routing, Online Schema Changes.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

turbopuffer: Can I self-host turbopuffer?

There is no open source or community edition. Single-tenant and bring-your-own-cloud deployments exist as commercial arrangements, but there is no way to run it independently of the vendor.

Vitess: Is Vitess free to use?

Yes. Vitess is completely free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. It is a graduated CNCF project with no licensing costs or pricing tiers.

Source
turbopuffer: How fast is it really?

Warm queries perform comparably to in-memory search engines. Cold queries, where data is not cached, have a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents. Write p90 is around 248 ms for a 512 KB upsert because writes go straight to object storage.

Vitess: What databases does Vitess support?

Vitess supports MySQL and MariaDB as backend databases. It acts as a middleware layer that adds sharding and orchestration capabilities on top of these databases.

Source
turbopuffer: Is it consistent?

Eventually consistent by default, with the vendor reporting that over 99.8% of queries return consistent data. Strong consistency can be requested per query at a latency cost. Large write bursts have a longer visibility delay while indexing catches up.

Vitess: Does Vitess require Kubernetes to run?

No. Vitess can run on Kubernetes using the Vitess Operator, but it can also be deployed on traditional infrastructure. Kubernetes integration is optional and provides additional automation benefits.

Source
turbopuffer: What is it best at?

Large numbers of namespaces where most are idle. The architecture makes cold data cheap to keep, which is exactly the shape of a multi-tenant product with a long tail of inactive customers.

Vitess: How does Vitess handle cross-shard transactions?

Vitess supports distributed transactions across shards, but they require queries to be routed through the sharding key. Transactions without a proper sharding key can result in slower performance.

Source
turbopuffer: What are the hard limits?

Up to 128 billion documents and 256 TB per namespace, 500 million documents per shard, 64 MiB per document, 10,752 dense vector dimensions, roughly 10,000 writes per second per namespace and a maximum result set of 10,000.

Vitess: Does Vitess enforce foreign key constraints?

Vitess does not enforce foreign key constraints across shards by default. Referential integrity must be managed at the application layer, though per-database support can be enabled with limitations.

Source
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