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Achref Soua edited this page Jun 26, 2026 · 1 revision

FAQ

What is Quiver?

A security-first, memory-frugal vector database in Rust: it stores embeddings and answers approximate-nearest-neighbour (ANN) queries, with encryption-at-rest on by default, a clean REST + gRPC API, an MCP server for AI agents, and a retro terminal cockpit. It runs comfortably on a laptop.

How does it compare to Qdrant / FAISS / pgvector / LanceDB?

Quiver benchmarks every system on the same machine with an ann-benchmarks-style harness and reports speed at a fixed recall bar. On SIFT1M it has measured as second only to FAISS at recall@10 ≥ 0.95, and it matches FAISS on GIST recall. The full methodology and raw numbers are in the README and the field guide; numbers that need dedicated reference hardware are marked pending rather than guessed.

Is my data encrypted?

Yes — encryption-at-rest is on by default, sealing every durable byte (segments, manifest, and the write-ahead log) with XChaCha20-Poly1305 under per-collection keys. Dropping a collection crypto-shreds it. Payloads can additionally be client-side encrypted so the server never sees them, and two opt-in modes address encrypting the vectors themselves (with honestly documented trade-offs).

Is it production-ready?

The single-node engine is mature: a kill -9 crash gate, concurrent reads, real durability, and a written security audit (static + OWASP ZAP + fuzzing). Clustering, GPU acceleration, and per-shard Raft write-HA are opt-in and off by default — the single node is unchanged at zero overhead. Check the roadmap for the current phase.

Can it scale beyond one node?

Yes, opt-in: sharding + scatter-gather, read replicas, a coordinator with online elastic membership and autoscaling, and per-shard Raft write high-availability. With no cluster configured, it is a single node.

How do I run it?

cargo run -p quiverdb-cli -- demo for a zero-config demo, or quiver serve with QUIVER_API_KEYS and QUIVER_ENCRYPTION_KEY set. See the configuration reference for every setting, and the Docker/Helm guides for deployment.

What license is it under?

AGPL-3.0-only — self-hostable, with the network-copyleft protection appropriate for a database you run yourself.

Where do I get help?

Usage questions → Discussions; bugs/features → Issues; vulnerabilities → SECURITY.md.