Zvec

Zvec is an open-source, lightweight, in-process vector database designed to embed directly into applications and serve fast similarity search workloads without the overhead of a separate server process. Developed by Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab, it positions itself as the “SQLite of vector databases” by being easy to integrate, minimal in dependencies, and capable of handling high throughput with low latency on edge devices or small systems. Zvec excels at approximate nearest neighbor search and retrieval tasks that power features like semantic search, recommendation systems, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) setups. Its performance benchmarks show it achieving high queries-per-second and fast index build times compared to similar tools. Because it runs in-process, developers can embed it in native apps, microservices, or edge computing scenarios where traditional server-based vector databases might be overkill.