Zvec

Zvec is an open-source, in-process vector database — lightweight, lightning-fast, and designed to embed directly into applications. Built on Proxima (Alibaba's battle-tested vector search engine), it delivers production-grade, low-latency, scalable similarity search with minimal setup.

📚 Quick Start | 🌐 Website | 📖 Documentation | 📊 Benchmarks

💫 Features

• Blazing Fast: Searches billions of vectors in milliseconds.
• Simple, Just Works: Install with pip install zvec and start searching in seconds. No servers, no config, no fuss.
• Dense + Sparse Vectors: Work with both dense and sparse embeddings, with native support for multi-vector queries in a single call.
• Hybrid Search: Combine semantic similarity with structured filters for precise results.
• Runs Anywhere: As an in-process library, Zvec runs wherever your code runs — notebooks, servers, CLI tools, or even edge devices.

📦 Installation

Install Zvec from PyPI with a single command:

pip install zvec

Requirements:

• Python 3.10 - 3.12
• Supported platforms:
  • Linux (x86_64)
  • macOS (ARM64/x86_64)

If you prefer to build Zvec from source, please check the Building from Source guide.

⚡ One-Minute Example

import zvec

# Define collection schema
schema = zvec.CollectionSchema(
    name="example",
    vectors=zvec.VectorSchema("embedding", zvec.DataType.VECTOR_FP32, 4),
)

# Create collection
collection = zvec.create_and_open(path="./zvec_example", schema=schema,)

# Insert documents
collection.insert([
    zvec.Doc(id="doc_1", vectors={"embedding": [0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4]}),
    zvec.Doc(id="doc_2", vectors={"embedding": [0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.1]}),
])

# Search by vector similarity
results = collection.query(
    zvec.VectorQuery("embedding", vector=[0.4, 0.3, 0.3, 0.1]),
    topk=10
)

# Results: list of {'id': str, 'score': float, ...}, sorted by relevance 
print(results)

❤️ Contributing

We welcome and appreciate contributions from the community!
Whether you're fixing a bug, adding a feature, or improving documentation, your help makes Zvec better for everyone.

Check out our Contributing Guide to get started!