1,809 stars · ⚠ THREE LICENCE FILES AND HALF OF IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE: /blob/main/LICENSE is only a dual-licence chooser notice and NAMES NO COPYRIGHT HOLDER; licenses/LICENSE.AGPLv3 is one option; licenses/LICENSE.ELv2 is the Elastic License v2, licensor not named, carrying the restriction "You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software." ELv2 is not an OSI licence · 1.1.1 (2026-02-28, settled ONLY by the ungh releases mirror — there is no vchord crate on crates.io and the Docker Hub tags are date-stamped rather than version-stamped, so NO PACKAGE REGISTRY CONFIRMED THE YEAR and the edition says so) · Track this in Scout
A disk-friendly vector index for PostgreSQL built on RaBitQ, so similarity search is not limited by memory.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
VectorChord is a PostgreSQL extension implementing a disk-friendly vector index, built on a method called RaBitQ. It is the successor to the same team's earlier pgvecto.rs.
What it is good for. Anyone adding search-by-meaning to an application that already has a PostgreSQL database, especially where the collection is larger than the memory budget. If your collection is small, plain pgvector is simpler and enough.
- 1,809 stars, and it comes as a ready-made PostgreSQL container image, so trying it is one command.
- Disk-based indexing is the real difference: memory stops being the limit on how much you can search.
- Code was pushed on 6 August 2026, and it supports PostgreSQL versions 14 through 18.
- Half of this licence is not open source, and the restriction is the one that matters for a business. There are three licence files.
/blob/main/LICENSEis only a notice telling you to choose, and it names no copyright holder.licenses/LICENSE.AGPLv3is one option.licenses/LICENSE.ELv2is the Elastic Licence version 2, which says: "You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software." So running it inside your own application is fine, and offering it to customers as a managed database is not — unless you take the AGPL side, which then obliges you to publish source. No licensor is named in either file. - The repository moved owner and the install instructions did not follow. It is now
supervc-stack/VectorChord, renamed fromtensorchord/VectorChord, and nothing on the page announces it. The README still pulls container images from the old owner's registry and still gives an email address at the old company's domain. If that registry is ever retired, the documented install breaks. - The release year could not be confirmed by any package registry: there is no
vchordcrate on crates.io, and the Docker images are tagged by date rather than by version. Version 1.1.1 is dated 28 February 2026 on the strength of a second GitHub mirror alone. No memory or disk figure is published for a disk-based index, which is an odd gap.
pgvector/pgvectorThe plain, permissively licensed PostgreSQL vector extension that most people start with; simpler, and it keeps its index in memory.
Track this in Scout- tensorchord/pgvecto.rs
This project's own predecessor, whose README now tells users to migrate to VectorChord and which has taken no code since 26 February 2025.
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docker run --name vectorchord-demo \ -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword \ -p 5432:5432 -d \ ghcr.io/tensorchord/vchord-postgres:pg18-v1.1.1
