Weaviate vs Novu

Open-source vector DB with hybrid search + modular embeddings
vs. Open-source notification infrastructure — workflows across email, SMS, push, chat, in-app

Weaviate website ↗Novu website ↗

Pricing tiers

Weaviate

Sandbox (14-day trial)

14-day free trial. Shared cloud cluster. 250 Query Agent req/month.

$0 base (usage-based)

Self-Hosted (OSS)

BSD-3 licensed. Run free on your infra.

$0 base (usage-based)

Flex

From $45/mo pay-as-you-go. Shared HA cluster. 99.5% uptime. 30k Query Agent reqs/mo.

$45/mo

Premium

From $400/mo prepaid. Shared or dedicated. 99.95% uptime. SSO/SAML. Unlimited Query Agent. HIPAA on AWS.

$400/mo

Enterprise

Custom. BYOC / private deployment.

Custom

Weaviate website ↗

Novu

Free

10K workflow runs/mo. All channels. 20 workflows, 2 environments, 3 team members, 24h retention.

Free

Self-hosted (OSS)

Open source (MIT). Run locally or on own infrastructure. No usage limits.

$0 base (usage-based)

Pro

From $30/mo. 30K+ runs, 7-day retention, branding removal, advanced email editor.

$30/mo

Team

From $250/mo. 250K+ runs, 10 envs, 90-day retention, RBAC, 600 RPS.

$250/mo

Enterprise

Custom. 10M+ runs, HIPAA BAA, SSO/OIDC, data residency (SG/UK/AU/JP/KR), self-hosted/VPC.

Custom

Novu website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing sandbox on Weaviate vs free on Novu.

Metric	Weaviate	Novu
retention	—	1 days
workflow runs monthly	—	10000 runs/mo
workflows	—	20 workflows

Features

Weaviate · 13 features

Backups — S3, GCS, Azure Blob backup destinations.
BYOC — Run managed Weaviate in your own cloud account.
Compression (PQ/BQ/RQ) — Reduce vector memory footprint by up to 32x.
Dynamic Indexing — HNSW + flat + dynamic index selection.
Generative Search — Search + RAG answers in one API call.
Hybrid Search — Combine BM25 + dense vector search in one query.
Modular Vectorizers — 60+ plug-in vectorizers + generative AI modules.
Multi-Tenancy — Per-tenant isolated vector stores in one cluster.
Query Agent (AI) — Agentic natural-language query generator.
RBAC — Role-based access control for collections + tenants.
Replication — Multi-node async + sync replication.
Self-Host (OSS) — BSD-3 licensed. Docker + k8s Helm.
Structured Filters — Metadata filters pre + post vector search.

Novu · 15 features

Activity Feed — Message-by-message delivery timeline.
Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Mattermost, WhatsApp, WeChat.
Email — SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, AWS SES, Resend, SMTP, Plunk, Mailjet, Sparkpost, M…
Inbox — React/Next/Vue/Angular in-app Inbox component.
Layouts — Reusable email layouts with template nesting.
Multi-tenancy — Per-tenant branding, templates, preferences.
Novu Framework — Code-first workflow DSL (TypeScript) colocated with app code.
Preferences — Per-subscriber + global notification preferences.
Push — APNs, FCM, Expo, OneSignal, Pushpad, Pusher.
Self-hosting — Docker Compose / Kubernetes deployment of full stack.
SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Plivo, Nexmo, Termii, Sendchamp, Africa's Talking, Kannel, …
Subscribers — Subscriber profiles with channels, preferences, topics.
Topics — Pub/sub style subscribe many users to a topic.
Translations — i18n support for templates.
Workflows — Code-first or visual notification workflows with steps, branches, delays.

Developer interfaces

Kind	Weaviate	Novu
CLI	—	Novu CLI
SDK	weaviate-client, weaviate-go-client, weaviate-java-client, weaviate-ts-client	go-novu, @novu/api, @novu/framework, novu-java, novu-kotlin, novu-php, novu (Python), @novu/react (Inbox), novu-ruby
REST	Weaviate REST API	Novu REST API
GRAPHQL	Weaviate GraphQL	—
MCP	Weaviate MCP	—
OTHER	Weaviate gRPC	Outbound Webhooks, Self-hosted (Docker)

Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Weaviate and Novu may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.