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AI Memory & Search🔴Developer
T

Turbopuffer

Turbopuffer is a serverless vector and full-text search engine built on object storage that delivers 10x cheaper similarity search at scale with sub-10ms latency for warm queries.

Starting at$64/month minimum
Visit Turbopuffer →
💡

In Plain English

A serverless vector database built on object storage that's 10x cheaper than alternatives — fast search across billions of documents with no infrastructure to manage.

OverviewFeaturesPricingUse CasesLimitationsFAQSecurityAlternatives

Overview

Turbopuffer is a serverless search engine that takes a fundamentally different architectural approach to vector databases: it's built from the ground up on object storage (like S3) rather than RAM or local SSDs. This design choice enables dramatic cost reduction — up to 10x cheaper than traditional vector databases — while maintaining fast query performance for warm namespaces.

The object storage-first architecture means turbopuffer's costs scale with data stored rather than memory provisioned. Traditional vector databases keep vectors in RAM or across SSD clusters, which becomes prohibitively expensive at scale. Turbopuffer stores data on cheap object storage and uses intelligent caching to serve frequently accessed namespaces with sub-10ms p50 latency. Cold namespaces (data not recently accessed) have higher latency (~343ms p50) but cost almost nothing to store.

Beyond vector search, turbopuffer provides BM25 full-text search and hybrid search that combines vector similarity with keyword matching. The full-text search engine was written from scratch for the object storage architecture, supporting configurable tokenization, language-specific analyzers, and efficient filtering. Hybrid search lets applications combine semantic relevance (vectors) with exact keyword matching (BM25) for more accurate results.

The platform handles massive scale in production: 2.5 trillion+ documents, 10 million+ writes per second, and 10,000+ queries per second. Namespaces can hold up to 500 million documents at 2TB each, with unlimited total namespaces. This makes it suitable for multi-tenant SaaS applications where each customer gets their own namespace.

Turbopuffer uses a namespace-based multi-tenancy model that maps cleanly to application architectures. Each namespace is independently queryable, automatically scaled, and isolated. The serverless model means there's no capacity planning, no cluster management, and no infrastructure to provision — you write data and query it.

The pricing is usage-based with a $64/month minimum commitment. At standard workloads (1536-dimension vectors, 1M reads, 1M writes, 10 namespaces), costs come in under $10/month of actual usage. SOC2 compliance, GDPR-ready DPA, and HIPAA-ready BAA are available across plans, with Enterprise adding single-tenancy, BYOC, private networking, and SSO.

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Key Features

Object Storage-First Architecture+

Built from the ground up on object storage rather than RAM or SSDs, enabling 10x lower costs than traditional vector databases while maintaining fast performance through intelligent caching.

Use Case:

Storing 100 million embeddings for a RAG application at a fraction of the cost of Pinecone or Weaviate by leveraging cheap object storage instead of provisioned memory.

BM25 Full-Text Search+

Native BM25 full-text search engine written from scratch for the object storage architecture, supporting configurable tokenization, language-specific analyzers, and efficient metadata filtering.

Use Case:

Searching through product documentation using keyword queries with stemming and stop-word removal, returning results ranked by BM25 relevance scoring.

Hybrid Search+

Combine vector similarity search with BM25 full-text search using multi-queries and client-side result fusion (e.g., reciprocal rank fusion) for more accurate retrieval.

Use Case:

Building a RAG pipeline that combines semantic embedding search with exact keyword matching to catch both conceptually relevant and terminologically precise results.

Namespace-Based Multi-Tenancy+

Unlimited namespaces that are independently queryable, automatically scaled, and isolated. Each namespace can hold up to 500M documents at 2TB, with no global document limit.

Use Case:

Running a multi-tenant SaaS application where each of 100,000 customers has their own isolated search namespace with automatic scaling.

Extreme Scale Performance+

Proven in production at 2.5T+ documents, 10M+ writes/s, and 10k+ queries/s globally. Sub-10ms p50 latency for warm namespaces with automatic cache management.

Use Case:

Powering real-time semantic search for a consumer application serving millions of concurrent users across billions of documents.

Metadata Filtering+

Filter vector and full-text search results by metadata attributes with support for complex filter expressions, enabling precise result narrowing without separate database queries.

Use Case:

Searching for semantically similar documents but filtering to only return results from the last 30 days and a specific content category.

Pricing Plans

Launch

$64.00/month

month

  • ✓All database features (vector, FTS, hybrid search)
  • ✓Multi-tenancy (shared infrastructure)
  • ✓SOC2 report and GDPR-ready DPA
  • ✓Community Slack and email support

Scale

Higher minimum commitment with enhanced support

  • ✓Everything in Launch
  • ✓HIPAA-ready BAA
  • ✓SSO (Single Sign-On)
  • ✓CMEK (Customer Managed Encryption Keys)
  • ✓Private Slack channel
  • ✓Support hours included

Enterprise

Custom pricing with SLA guarantees

  • ✓Everything in Scale
  • ✓Single-tenancy deployment
  • ✓BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud)
  • ✓Private networking
  • ✓Support SLA
  • ✓Uptime SLA
See Full Pricing →Free vs Paid →Is it worth it? →

Ready to get started with Turbopuffer?

View Pricing Options →

Best Use Cases

🎯

Cost-Efficient Vector Search at Scale: Applications storing hundreds of millions to billions of embeddings where traditional vector database costs become prohibitive, benefiting from 10x cost reduction.

⚡

Multi-Tenant SaaS Search: SaaS applications needing isolated search namespaces for thousands or millions of customers, leveraging turbopuffer's unlimited namespace support with per-namespace scaling.

🔧

Hybrid Semantic + Keyword Search: RAG pipelines and search applications that benefit from combining vector similarity with BM25 full-text search for higher retrieval accuracy without separate search infrastructure.

🚀

Large-Scale AI Application Infrastructure: AI applications processing billions of documents that need proven production-grade vector search with high write throughput and query capacity.

Limitations & What It Can't Do

We believe in transparent reviews. Here's what Turbopuffer doesn't handle well:

  • ⚠Cold namespace queries have ~343ms p50 latency, unsuitable for real-time applications needing consistently low latency across all data
  • ⚠$64/month minimum commitment makes it more expensive than free-tier alternatives for small projects or experimentation
  • ⚠No self-hosted or open-source option — vendor lock-in for teams that need infrastructure control
  • ⚠Write latency (p50 >200ms) is higher than in-memory vector databases, limiting suitability for write-intensive real-time applications

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

  • ✓10x cheaper than traditional vector databases at scale due to object storage-first architecture instead of RAM-heavy designs
  • ✓Sub-10ms p50 latency for warm queries rivals in-memory databases while maintaining dramatically lower costs
  • ✓Native BM25 full-text search and hybrid search combine semantic and keyword retrieval without needing separate search infrastructure
  • ✓Unlimited namespaces with automatic scaling makes it ideal for multi-tenant SaaS applications with thousands of customers
  • ✓Proven at extreme scale: 2.5T+ documents, 10M+ writes/s in production — not just benchmarks

✗ Cons

  • ✗$64/month minimum commitment can be expensive for small projects or hobbyists compared to free tiers on Pinecone or Qdrant
  • ✗Cold namespace queries have significantly higher latency (~343ms p50) which may not suit real-time applications accessing infrequently-used data
  • ✗Not open source — no self-hosted option for teams that need full control over their infrastructure
  • ✗Write latency is higher than in-memory databases (p50 >200ms), which can be a bottleneck for write-heavy workloads

Frequently Asked Questions

How does turbopuffer achieve such low costs?+

Turbopuffer stores all data on object storage (like S3) instead of keeping vectors in RAM or on SSDs. Object storage costs ~$0.02/GB/month vs $3-10/GB/month for memory. Intelligent caching keeps frequently accessed data fast (sub-10ms), while rarely accessed data stays on cheap storage. You pay for actual storage and queries rather than provisioned capacity.

What's the difference between warm and cold namespace latency?+

Warm namespaces (recently accessed) benefit from caching and serve queries at sub-10ms p50 latency. Cold namespaces (not recently accessed) need to load data from object storage first, resulting in ~343ms p50 latency. After the first query, a cold namespace becomes warm. The system automatically manages caching — no manual warm-up needed.

How does turbopuffer compare to Pinecone?+

Turbopuffer is dramatically cheaper at scale (10x+) due to its object storage architecture. Pinecone keeps vectors in memory, delivering consistently low latency but at much higher cost. Turbopuffer matches Pinecone's latency for warm queries but has higher latency for cold data. Turbopuffer also includes native full-text search, which Pinecone doesn't offer. Choose Pinecone for consistent low-latency at any scale; turbopuffer for cost efficiency at scale.

Is turbopuffer suitable for RAG applications?+

Yes, turbopuffer is well-suited for RAG pipelines. It supports vector search, BM25 full-text search, and hybrid search — all important for retrieval quality. The main consideration is cold namespace latency: if your RAG application accesses many different data sources infrequently, cold start latency (~343ms) adds to response time. For applications with consistent data access patterns, warm namespace latency is excellent.

🔒 Security & Compliance

🛡️ SOC2 Compliant
✅
SOC2
Yes
✅
GDPR
Yes
✅
HIPAA
Yes
✅
SSO
Yes
❌
Self-Hosted
No
❌
On-Prem
No
❌
RBAC
No
❌
Audit Log
No
✅
API Key Auth
Yes
❌
Open Source
No
✅
Encryption at Rest
Yes
✅
Encryption in Transit
Yes
Data Retention: configurable
📋 Privacy Policy →🛡️ Security Page →
🦞

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What's New in 2026

In 2025-2026, turbopuffer reduced query prices by up to 94%, dramatically lowering costs for high-query workloads. The platform surpassed 2.5 trillion stored documents in production. New features include customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) per namespace, private networking for enterprise deployments, and configurable tokenization for full-text search. The pricing calculator on turbopuffer.com now shows transparent per-operation costs for storage, reads, and writes.

Alternatives to Turbopuffer

Pinecone

AI Memory & Search

Vector database designed for AI applications that need fast similarity search across high-dimensional embeddings. Pinecone handles the complex infrastructure of vector search operations, enabling developers to build semantic search, recommendation engines, and RAG applications with simple APIs while providing enterprise-scale performance and reliability.

Weaviate

AI Memory & Search

Open-source vector database enabling hybrid search, multi-tenancy, and built-in vectorization modules for AI applications requiring semantic similarity and structured filtering combined.

Qdrant

AI Memory & Search

High-performance vector search engine built entirely in Rust for scalable AI applications. Provides fast, memory-efficient vector similarity search with advanced features like hybrid search, real-time indexing, and comprehensive filtering capabilities. Designed for production RAG systems, recommendation engines, and AI agents requiring fast vector operations at scale.

Chroma

AI Memory & Search

Open-source vector database designed for AI applications with fast similarity search, multi-modal embeddings, and serverless cloud infrastructure for RAG systems and semantic search.

View All Alternatives & Detailed Comparison →

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Quick Info

Category

AI Memory & Search

Website

turbopuffer.com
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