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Vector Databases Are a Scam — I Did the Math
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Ethan
April 9, 2026
Summary
Vector Databases Are a Scam — I Did the Math $80K/year for vector search at 1B vectors. You're paying for RAM. That's it.
short-form
About this video
Vector Databases Are a Scam — I Did the Math $80K/year for vector search at 1B vectors. You're paying for RAM. That's it. Here's what most people don't realize: 1. Managed vector DBs store everything in RAM — that's the cost 2. Object storage (S3) can serve vector queries in under 10ms 3. We built a Rust engine on S3: same latency, 95% cheaper 4. The architecture: Ray coordinator → Rust shards → S3 1B vectors. Managed: $80K. S3-native: $3,500. Same recall. Same latency. Benchmarks are open-sourced → mixpeek.com #VectorDatabase #AI #MachineLearning #VectorSearch #AIInfrastructure #StartupCosts #Engineering