rUvector Performance Benchmarks

December 9, 2025 · View on GitHub

Date: November 25, 2025 Test Environment: Linux 4.4.0, Rust 1.91.1


⚠️ Important Disclaimer

This document contains internal rUvector benchmark results only.

The previous version of this document made unfounded performance claims comparing rUvector to other vector databases (e.g., "100-4,400x faster than Qdrant"). These claims were based on fabricated data and hardcoded multipliers in test code, not actual comparative benchmarks.

We have removed all false comparison claims. This document now only reports verified rUvector internal benchmark results.


Verified rUvector Benchmark Results

1. Distance Metrics Performance (SimSIMD + AVX2)

rUvector uses SimSIMD with custom AVX2 intrinsics for SIMD-optimized distance calculations:

DimensionsEuclideanCosineDot Product
128D25 ns22 ns22 ns
384D47 ns42 ns42 ns
768D90 ns78 ns78 ns
1536D167 ns135 ns135 ns

Batch Processing (1000 vectors × 384D): 278 µs total = 3.6M distance ops/sec

2. HNSW Search Performance

Benchmarked with 1,000 vectors, 128 dimensions:

k (neighbors)LatencyQPS Equivalent
k=145 µs22,222 QPS
k=1061 µs16,393 QPS
k=100165 µs6,061 QPS

3. rUvector Internal Scaling Tests

10,000 Vectors, 384 Dimensions

ConfigurationInsert (ops/s)Search QPSp50 Latency
rUvector34,435,4426231.57 ms
rUvector (quantized)29,673,9437421.34 ms

50,000 Vectors, 384 Dimensions

ConfigurationInsert (ops/s)Search QPSp50 Latency
rUvector16,697,3771138.71 ms
rUvector (quantized)35,065,8911436.86 ms

4. Quantization Performance

Scalar Quantization (4x compression)

Operation384D768D1536D
Encode605 ns1.27 µs2.11 µs
Decode493 ns971 ns1.89 µs
Distance64 ns127 ns256 ns

Binary Quantization (32x compression)

Operation384D768D1536D
Encode625 ns1.27 µs2.5 µs
Decode485 ns970 ns1.9 µs
Hamming Distance33 ns65 ns128 ns

Compression Ratios:

  • Scalar (int8): 4x memory reduction
  • Product Quantization: 8-16x memory reduction
  • Binary: 32x memory reduction (with ~10% recall loss)

Architecture

rUvector

ComponentTechnologyBenefit
CoreRust + NAPI-RSZero-overhead bindings
DistanceSimSIMD + AVX2/AVX-5124-16x faster than scalar
Indexhnsw_rsO(log n) search
Storageredb (memory-mapped)Zero-copy I/O
ConcurrencyDashMap + RwLockLock-free reads
WASMwasm-bindgenBrowser support

Features

FeaturerUvector
HNSW Index
Cosine/Euclidean/DotProduct
Scalar Quantization
Product Quantization
Binary Quantization
Filtered Search
Hybrid Search (BM25)
MMR Diversity
Hypergraph Support
Neural Hashing
Conformal Prediction
AgenticDB API
Browser/WASM

Use Cases

rUvector is ideal for:

  • Embedded/Edge deployment - Single binary, no external dependencies
  • Low-latency requirements - Sub-millisecond search times
  • Browser/WASM - Need vector search in frontend
  • AI Agent integration - AgenticDB API, hypergraphs, causal memory
  • Research/experimental - Neural hashing, TDA, learned indexes

Reproducing Benchmarks

# rUvector Rust benchmarks
cargo bench -p ruvector-core --bench hnsw_search
cargo bench -p ruvector-core --bench distance_metrics
cargo bench -p ruvector-core --bench quantization_bench

References


Note on Comparisons

We do not currently have verified comparative benchmarks against other vector databases.

If you need to compare rUvector with other solutions, please run your own benchmarks in your specific environment with your specific workload. Performance characteristics vary significantly based on:

  • Vector dimensions and count
  • Search parameters (k, ef_search)
  • Hardware configuration
  • Dataset distribution
  • Query patterns

We welcome community contributions of fair, reproducible comparative benchmarks.