The pioneer of managed vector databases. It offers a 'Serverless' experience where you don't manage pods, but costs can skyrocket for read-heavy applications (RAG) due to its 'Read Unit' billing model.

A 'batteries-included' vector database that handles embedding generation and hybrid search out of the box. While convenient, its pricing scales poorly with high-dimension vectors (e.g., OpenAI models), and the managed cloud adds a significant markup over self-hosting.