LanceDB
Embedded vector DB (Arrow columnar). RRF reranker. Petabyte-scale on disk.
Active · Verified 2026-10-26 · fresh as of 2026-10-26 · 81 cited facts, 8 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- Embedded Arrow-columnar vector DB vendor fix
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- Vector-database infrastructure
- Latest release
- v0.40.0 (2026-10-07) registry fix
- License
- Apache-2.0 repo fix
- Funding
- $38M total Series A · 2025-06 vendor fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-26 fix
- Layer
- model-infra repo fix
- SDK languages
- java, python, rest, rust, typescript vendor fix
- Protocols
- mcp-server repo fix
- Compliance
- gdpr, hipaa, soc2-type2 vendor fix
- Developer activity
- OpenRank 19.44 (12-mo avg 15.64) · 71 participants — 2026-09 third-party fix
When to use
Optimised for: low-latency similarity search + scale
Anti-fit: not for relational / graph-heavy queries (vector-first by design)
Pros & cons
Pros
Built on Lance columnar format — gives you vector search + analytical SQL on the same data without ETL between systems.
Cons
Newer ecosystem; fewer integrations than Pinecone / Weaviate; Lance format is non-standard so portability requires conversion.
Claims & capabilities
Lance format v2.2 cuts storage 50%+; up to 68x faster blob reads vs Parquet; production architecture targets 25ms vector search latency, 50ms with metadata filtering, thousands of QPS; benchmarks on 1M 960-dim GIST: <20ms queries, recall@1 ~0.90 in 3ms via IVF + PQ; LanceDB Cloud (serverless, usage-based) launched public beta 2025
Technical surface
- API surface
- REST (cloud), SDK: Python, JS/TS, Rust
- Backend storage
- custom (Lance columnar format on object storage)
- Deployment
- Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — embedded OSS library; LanceDB Enterprise as Managed or BYOC
- Embedding model
- multiple supported
- Multi-tenancy
- Logical namespace per dataset; embedded library or LanceDB Cloud (single-tenant available)
- MCP
- yes — official reference server lancedb/lancedb-mcp-server (basic, 3 tools)
- A2A
- no Google A2A (Agent2Agent) integration documented as of 2026-05.
- OpenTelemetry
- no first-party OpenTelemetry exporter documented; standard logs/metrics typically available.
Alternatives to LanceDB → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other vector-database infrastructure in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Qdrant T1
Distribution-Based Score Fusion + RRF. Sparse vectors native; filtering via ANN graph modification.
- Chroma T1
Limited native hybrid (users build RRF custom). Fast Rust core (v2.5). Acquired by Replit (definitive agreement announced 2026-10-23); Chroma Cloud is winding down (writes disabled 2026-11-22, reads disabled 2026-12-22) while open-source ChromaDB continues under Apache-2.0.
- pgvector T1
Stores embeddings alongside relational + full-text data. HNSW + IVFFlat ANN indexes. Used as agent conversation memory via LangChain + MCP. Foundation of Supabase AI and many self-hosted RAG stacks.
- Weaviate T1
Hybrid Search 2.0 with learned ranking. BM25 + vector in unified index.
- Milvus T1
Multi-vector columns (10 simultaneous). Native hybrid search (v2.5). CAGRA + Vamana GPU/CPU (v2.6).
- Pinecone T1
Managed vector DB. Cascading sparse + dense + rerank pipeline; pinecone-rerank-v0 .
Sources (80 cited facts, 8 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Embedded Arrow-columnar vector DB vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Embedded vector DB (Arrow columnar). RRF reranker. Petabyte-scale on disk. vendor
- Claims / benefits Lance format v2.2 cuts storage 50%+; up to 68x faster blob reads vs Parquet; production … vendor
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2023-02 repo
- Latest release v0.40.0 (2026-10-07) registry
- License Apache-2.0 repo
- GitHub lancedb/lancedb — ~11.3k stars, last commit 2026-10 repo
- Mindshare 1 inbound 48 HN · 1 press third-party
- Funding $38M total Series A · 2025-06 vendor
- Customers / scale $2M ARR 11-50 ppl third-party
- Pricing free (OSS); LanceDB Enterprise/Cloud pricing via sales (no public price list) vendor
- Compliance SOC 2 Type II (Enterprise; continuous audits); HIPAA; GDPR in progress vendor
- Data handling Customer data strictly within account; rigorous data isolation and encryption at rest vendor
- Deployment Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — embedded OSS library; LanceDB Enterprise as Managed… vendor
- HQ US third-party
- Founders / pedigree Chang She (CEO, ex-Tubi/Cloudera) & Lei Xu (CTO, ex-Cruise). third-party
- Memory volume / scale petabyte-scale on disk (vendor claim) vendor
- Performance LanceDB benchmark: 100× faster than Parquet, 2-5× faster than Pinecone on cold-start que… vendor
- API surface REST (cloud), SDK: Python, JS/TS, Rust vendor
- Backend storage custom (Lance columnar format on object storage) vendor
- Multi-tenancy Logical namespace per dataset; embedded library or LanceDB Cloud (single-tenant available) vendor
- Encryption At-rest via underlying object storage (S3/GCS/Azure server-side encryption); TLS in tran… vendor
- Embedding model multiple supported vendor
- Consistency strong vendor
- Versioning time-travel queries vendor
- Tombstoning soft-delete only vendor
- Schema evolution schema with migration vendor
- Namespace primitives per-project vendor
- Contradiction handling always overwrite (last-write-wins) vendor
- Forgetting policy user-controlled forget vendor
- MCP support yes — official reference server lancedb/lancedb-mcp-server (basic, 3 tools) repo
- Webhooks / events no vendor
- Import / export Parquet (Lance format), Arrow, Pandas vendor
- Runtimes Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust (Java via REST) vendor
- Validated verticals RAG developers, agent builders (broad horizontal); financial-services, healthcare, legal… vendor
- Time to running <10min (managed cloud) to <1hr (self-host Docker) vendor
- Anti-fit not for relational / graph-heavy queries (vector-first by design) vendor
- Optimised for low-latency similarity search + scale vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure BYO embedding model + LLM; this IS the vector store vendor
- Pros Built on Lance columnar format — gives you vector search + analytical SQL on the same da… vendor
- Cons Newer ecosystem; fewer integrations than Pinecone / Weaviate; Lance format is non-standa… vendor
- Project & sources lancedb.com GitHub lancedb/lancedb vendor
- obs-langsmith yes third-party
- obs-opentelemetry yes vendor
- obs-helicone no vendor
- obs-weave no vendor
- obs-langfuse no vendor
- obs-arize no vendor
- obs-custom OTLP-native metrics from LanceDB server vendor
- cost-token-budget no vendor
- cost-prompt-caching no vendor
- cost-semantic-caching no vendor
- cost-batching no vendor
- cost-model-routing no vendor
- cost-streaming-only no vendor
- cost-observability-cost-attribution no vendor
- eval-langsmith-evals yes third-party
- eval-braintrust no vendor
- eval-weights-and-biases-agent no vendor
- eval-helicone-evals no vendor
- eval-custom-test-harness no vendor
- eval-human-loop no vendor
- eval-production-traffic-replay no vendor
- commit-trajectory [{"ym":"2025-01","cum":1554},{"ym":"2025-02","cum":1637},{"ym":"2025-03","cum":1722},{"y… repo
- download-trajectory [{"ym":"2025-11","monthly":1361695,"cum":1361695},{"ym":"2025-12","monthly":3096730,"cum… registry
- cost-input-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-output-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-tier free vendor
- cost-pricing-model free-tier vendor
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 vendor
- adoption-accelerator yc-w22 third-party
- architecture-deployment-locus hybrid repo
- licensing-bucket open-core vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product platform repo
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup model-infra repo
- developer-activity-opendigger {"activity":235.35,"as_of":"2026-09","openrank_12mo":15.64,"openrank_current":19.44,"par… third-party
- compliance-certifications gdpr,hipaa,soc2-type2 vendor
- sdk-languages java,python,rest,rust,typescript vendor
- protocol-support mcp-server repo
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-26
- Latest release “python-v0.31.0-… 2026-04-29” → “v0.40.0 (2026-10-07)” source
- Pricing “Free + paid” → “free (OSS); LanceDB Enterprise/Cloud pricing via sales (no public price list)” source
- Deployment “Both” → “Both (self-hosted + managed cloud) — embedded OSS library; LanceDB Enterprise as Managed or BYOC” source
- MCP support first recorded as “yes — official reference server lancedb/lancedb-mcp-server (basic, 3 tools)” source
Related systems
References (11)
- Cohere Embed integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Cohere Embed integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Genkit integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Genkit integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Google Gemini 3 family integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Google Gemini 3 family integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Jina AI Embeddings integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Jina AI Embeddings integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- LangChain (framework) integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a LangChain (framework) integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- LlamaIndex (framework) integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a LlamaIndex (framework) integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- OpenAI Embeddings integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a OpenAI Embeddings integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- OpenAI GPT family (GPT-5 / GPT-4o / o3 / o4) integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a OpenAI GPT family (GPT-5 / GPT-4o / o3 / o4) integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Phidata (now Agno) integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Phidata integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Sentence Transformers integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Sentence Transformers integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Voyage AI (MongoDB) integrates with — LanceDB's docs have a Voyage AI (MongoDB) integration page. (verified 2026-10-29)
Referenced by (8)
- Agno (Phidata) Memory integrates with — Single-line integrations with LanceDB, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant.
- Cognee depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: BYO LLM; bundles Kuzu/Neo4j for graph + LanceDB for vectors
- CrewAI Memory integrates with — CrewAI memory docs say memory is stored in LanceDB by default. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Haystack (framework) integrates with — Haystack integrations directory has a LanceDB Haystack integration page ("A DocumentStore backed by LanceDB"). (verified 2026-10-29)
- LlamaIndex (framework) integrates with — LlamaIndex has an official vector store integration package llama-index-vector-stores-lancedb in its repo. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Mastra integrates with — Mastra repo ships the @mastra/lance (LanceDB) store package. (verified 2026-10-29)
- OpenLLMetry (Traceloop) integrates with — OpenLLMetry's What's Supported page lists LanceDB as instrumented out of the box. (verified 2026-10-29)
- Phidata (now Agno) integrates with — Agno ships a lancedb vector DB integration module (agno.vectordb.lancedb). (verified 2026-10-29)