# Redis Cloud vs Qdrant

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/redis-cloud-vs-qdrant/

Every value below is read from Redis Cloud's and Qdrant's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Redis Cloud | Qdrant |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing model | On-demand hourly billing. Data transfer is included in the price, with limits. | Usage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models. |
| Similarity metrics supported | Cosine similarity is documented as a supported distance metric in Redis's vector field schema (DISTANCE_METRIC: COSINE in example code); other metrics were not confirmed in what is sourced here. | Dot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance, and Manhattan distance. |
| Metadata filtering | Supported — a vector KNN query can be combined with a pre-filter on other indexed fields in the same query. | Supported — collections store points (vectors with a payload) and support dedicated filtering on payload fields. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Redis Cloud: On-demand hourly billing. Data transfer is included in the price, with limits. ([source](https://redis.io/pricing/))
- Qdrant: Usage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models. ([source](https://qdrant.tech/pricing/))

### Similarity metrics supported

- Redis Cloud: Cosine similarity is documented as a supported distance metric in Redis's vector field schema (DISTANCE_METRIC: COSINE in example code); other metrics were not confirmed in what is sourced here. ([source](https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/ai/search-and-query/query/vector-search/))
- Qdrant: Dot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance, and Manhattan distance. ([source](https://qdrant.tech/documentation/concepts/collections/))

### Metadata filtering

- Redis Cloud: Supported — a vector KNN query can be combined with a pre-filter on other indexed fields in the same query. ([source](https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/ai/search-and-query/query/vector-search/))
- Qdrant: Supported — collections store points (vectors with a payload) and support dedicated filtering on payload fields. ([source](https://qdrant.tech/documentation/concepts/collections/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Redis Cloud if Teams that want Redis from the company that maintains it, with an on-demand hourly Essentials tier cheap enough to run a small production workload without committing to a fixed plan.

Pick Qdrant if Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.

Consider something else: Redis Cloud — Multi-region active-active replication is needed on a small budget — that's a Pro-tier feature here, where a serverless competitor may price per-region replication into a lower-cost plan.

Consider something else: Qdrant — A published, calculator-free entry price matters — Qdrant Cloud's Standard tier pricing is usage-based with no static per-month figure quoted, unlike some competitors' flat entry plans.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Redis Cloud: Essentials: from $0.007/hour, $5/month total. 250 MB-100 GB RAM and SSD, single DB.
- Regions: Qdrant: Standard and Premium tiers run on AWS, Azure and GCP.
- Multi-region replication: Redis Cloud: Not available on Free or Essentials. The Pro plan adds active-active (multi-region) replication and private connectivity.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Redis Cloud or Qdrant?**

Pick Redis Cloud if Teams that want Redis from the company that maintains it, with an on-demand hourly Essentials tier cheap enough to run a small production workload without committing to a fixed plan.
Pick Qdrant if Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.