edgevec

v0.9.0

Published

2 months ago

High-performance embedded vector database for Browser, Node, and Edge — HNSW, FlatIndex, Sparse Vectors, Hybrid Search

EdgeVec

The first WASM-native vector database. Dense + sparse vectors, hybrid search, binary quantization, metadata filtering — all in the browser.

EdgeVec is an embedded vector database built in Rust with first-class WebAssembly support. It brings server-grade vector database features to the browser: HNSW + FlatIndex, sparse vectors with BM25, hybrid search (RRF fusion), 32x memory reduction via binary quantization, metadata filtering, soft delete, persistence, and sub-millisecond search.

Why EdgeVec?

| Feature | EdgeVec | hnswlib-wasm | Pinecone | |:--------|:-------:|:------------:|:--------:| | Vector Search | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Binary Quantization | Yes (32x) | No | No | | Metadata Filtering | Yes | No | Yes | | Sparse Vectors | Yes | No | Yes | | Hybrid Search (RRF) | Yes | No | Yes | | FlatIndex (exact) | Yes | No | Limited | | BinaryFlatIndex | Yes | No | No | | SQL-like Queries | Yes | No | Yes | | Memory Pressure API | Yes | No | No | | Soft Delete | Yes | No | Yes | | Persistence | Yes | No | Yes | | Browser-native | Yes | Yes | No | | No server required | Yes | Yes | No | | Offline capable | Yes | Yes | No |

EdgeVec is the only WASM vector database with binary quantization, sparse vectors, hybrid search, BinaryFlatIndex, and filtered search.

Try It Now

Build filters visually, see live results, copy-paste ready code:

Filter Playground - Interactive filter builder with live sandbox

Visual filter construction
10 ready-to-use examples
Live WASM execution
Copy-paste code snippets (JS/TS/React)

Quick Start

npm install edgevec

import init, { EdgeVec } from 'edgevec';

await init();

// Create index (768D for embeddings like OpenAI, Cohere)
const db = new EdgeVec({ dimensions: 768 });

// Insert vectors with metadata (v0.6.0)
const vector = new Float32Array(768).map(() => Math.random());
const id = db.insertWithMetadata(vector, {
    category: "books",
    price: 29.99,
    inStock: true
});

// Search with filter expression (v0.6.0)
const query = new Float32Array(768).map(() => Math.random());
const results = db.searchWithFilter(query, 'category = "books" AND price < 50', 10);

// Fast BQ search with rescoring — 32x less memory, 95% recall (v0.6.0)
const fastResults = db.searchBQ(query, 10);

// Monitor memory pressure (v0.6.0)
const pressure = db.getMemoryPressure();
if (pressure.level === 'warning') {
    db.compact();  // Free deleted vectors
}

Interactive Demos

Try EdgeVec directly in your browser:

| Demo | Description | |:-----|:------------| | Filter Playground v0.7.0 | Visual filter builder with live sandbox (NEW!) | | v0.6.0 Cyberpunk Demo | BQ vs F32 comparison, metadata filtering, memory pressure | | Demo Hub | All demos in one place |

Run locally: | Demo | Path | |:-----|:-----| | SIMD Benchmark | wasm/examples/simd_benchmark.html | | Benchmark Dashboard | wasm/examples/benchmark-dashboard.html | | Soft Delete Demo | wasm/examples/soft_delete.html | | Main Demo | wasm/examples/index.html |

# Run demos locally
git clone https://github.com/matte1782/edgevec.git
cd edgevec
python -m http.server 8080
# Open http://localhost:8080/wasm/examples/index.html

Performance

EdgeVec v0.9.0 uses SIMD instructions for 2x+ faster vector operations on modern browsers.

Distance Calculation (Native Benchmark)

| Dimension | Dot Product | L2 Distance | Throughput | |:----------|:------------|:------------|:-----------| | 128 | 55 ns | 66 ns | 2.3 Gelem/s | | 384 | 188 ns | 184 ns | 2.1 Gelem/s | | 768 | 374 ns | 358 ns | 2.1 Gelem/s | | 1536 | 761 ns | 693 ns | 2.1 Gelem/s |

Search Latency (768D vectors, k=10)

| Scale | EdgeVec | Target | Status | |:------|:--------|:-------|:-------| | 1k vectors | 380 us | <1 ms | 2.6x under | | 10k vectors | 938 us | <1 ms | PASS |

Hamming Distance (Binary Quantization)

| Operation | Time | Throughput | |:----------|:-----|:-----------| | 768-bit pair | 4.5 ns | 40 GiB/s | | Batch 10k | 79 us | 127 Melem/s |

Browser Support

| Browser | SIMD | Performance | |:--------|:-----|:------------| | Chrome 91+ | YES | Full speed | | Firefox 89+ | YES | Full speed | | Safari 16.4+ | YES | Full speed (macOS) | | Edge 91+ | YES | Full speed | | iOS Safari | NO | Scalar fallback |

Note: iOS Safari doesn't support WASM SIMD. EdgeVec automatically uses scalar fallback, which is ~2x slower but still functional.

Bundle Size

| Package | Size (gzip) | Notes | |:--------|:------------|:------| | edgevec | 217 KB | SIMD enabled (541 KB uncompressed) |

Full benchmark report ->

Database Features

Binary Quantization (v0.6.0)

32x memory reduction with minimal recall loss:

// BQ is auto-enabled for dimensions divisible by 8
const db = new EdgeVec({ dimensions: 768 });

// Raw BQ search (~85% recall, ~5x faster)
const bqResults = db.searchBQ(query, 10);

// BQ + rescore (~95% recall, ~3x faster)
const rescoredResults = db.searchBQRescored(query, 10, 5);

| Mode | Memory (100k × 768D) | Speed | Recall@10 | |:-----|:---------------------|:------|:----------| | F32 (baseline) | ~300 MB | 1x | 100% | | BQ raw | ~10 MB | 5x | ~85% | | BQ + rescore(5) | ~10 MB | 3x | ~95% |

Metadata Filtering (v0.6.0)

Insert vectors with metadata, search with SQL-like filter expressions:

// Insert with metadata
db.insertWithMetadata(vector, {
    category: "electronics",
    price: 299.99,
    tags: ["featured", "sale"]
});

// Search with filter
db.searchWithFilter(query, 'category = "electronics" AND price < 500', 10);
db.searchWithFilter(query, 'tags ANY ["featured"]', 10);  // Array membership

// Complex expressions
db.searchWithFilter(query,
    '(category = "electronics" OR category = "books") AND price < 100',
    10
);

Operators: =, !=, >, <, >=, <=, AND, OR, NOT, ANY

Filter syntax documentation ->

Memory Pressure API (v0.6.0)

Monitor and control WASM heap usage:

const pressure = db.getMemoryPressure();
// { level: 'normal', usedBytes: 52428800, totalBytes: 268435456, usagePercent: 19.5 }

if (pressure.level === 'warning') {
    db.compact();  // Free deleted vectors
}

if (!db.canInsert()) {
    console.warn('Memory critical, inserts blocked');
}

Soft Delete & Compaction

// O(1) soft delete
db.softDelete(id);

// Check status
console.log('Live:', db.liveCount());
console.log('Deleted:', db.deletedCount());

// Reclaim space when needed
if (db.needsCompaction()) {
    const result = db.compact();
    console.log(`Removed ${result.tombstones_removed} tombstones`);
}

Persistence

// Save to IndexedDB (browser) or filesystem
await db.save("my-vector-db");

// Load existing database
const db = await EdgeVec.load("my-vector-db");

Scalar Quantization

const config = new EdgeVecConfig(768);
config.quantized = true;  // Enable SQ8 quantization

// 3.6x memory reduction: 3.03 GB -> 832 MB at 1M vectors

FlatIndex (v0.9.0)

Brute-force exact nearest neighbor search for small datasets. No graph overhead, 100% recall guarantee.

use edgevec::{FlatIndex, FlatIndexConfig, DistanceMetric};

let config = FlatIndexConfig::new(768)
    .with_metric(DistanceMetric::Cosine)
    .with_capacity(10_000);
let mut index = FlatIndex::new(config);

let id = index.insert(&embedding)?;
let results = index.search(&query, 10)?;

Sparse Vectors (v0.9.0)

CSR-format sparse vector storage with inverted index for fast keyword-style retrieval.

use edgevec::SparseVector;
use edgevec::sparse::{SparseStorage, SparseSearcher};

let sv = SparseVector::new(
    vec![10, 42, 999],       // term indices
    vec![0.8, 1.2, 0.3],    // term weights
    30_000,                   // vocabulary size
)?;

let mut storage = SparseStorage::new();
let id = storage.insert(&sv)?;

let searcher = SparseSearcher::new(&storage);
let results = searcher.search(&query_sv, 10);

Hybrid Search (v0.9.0)

Combine dense (HNSW) and sparse retrieval with RRF or linear fusion.

use edgevec::hybrid::{HybridSearcher, HybridSearchConfig, FusionMethod};

let searcher = HybridSearcher::new(&hnsw_index, &dense_storage, &sparse_storage);

let config = HybridSearchConfig::new(
    50, 50, 10,
    FusionMethod::Rrf { k: 60 },
);

let results = searcher.search(&dense_query, &sparse_query, &config)?;

BinaryFlatIndex (v0.9.0)

Native binary vector storage with Hamming distance search. 32x memory reduction.

use edgevec::BinaryFlatIndex;

let mut index = BinaryFlatIndex::new(768)?;
let id = index.insert(&binary_vector)?;
let results = index.search(&query, 10)?;

Rust Usage

use edgevec::{HnswConfig, HnswIndex, VectorStorage};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let config = HnswConfig::new(768);
    let mut storage = VectorStorage::new(&config, None);
    let mut index = HnswIndex::new(config, &storage)?;

    // Insert
    let vector = vec![0.1; 768];
    let id = index.insert(&vector, &mut storage)?;

    // Search
    let query = vec![0.1; 768];
    let results = index.search(&query, 10, &storage)?;

    // Soft delete
    index.soft_delete(id)?;

    Ok(())
}

Documentation

| Document | Description | |:---------|:------------| | Tutorial | Getting started guide | | Filter Syntax | Complete filter expression reference | | Database Operations | CRUD operations guide | | FlatIndex API | FlatIndex reference | | Sparse Vectors | Sparse vector storage and search | | Hybrid Search | Dense + sparse fusion guide | | BinaryFlatIndex | Binary vector index reference | | Performance Tuning | HNSW parameter optimization | | Migration Guide | Migrating from hnswlib, FAISS, Pinecone | | Comparison | When to use EdgeVec vs alternatives |

Limitations

EdgeVec is designed for client-side vector search. It is NOT suitable for:

Billion-scale datasets — Browser memory limits apply (~1GB practical limit)
Multi-user concurrent access — Single-user, single-tab design
Distributed deployments — Runs locally only

For these use cases, consider Pinecone, Qdrant, or Weaviate.

Version History

v0.9.0 — Sparse vectors (CSR), hybrid search (RRF + linear fusion), FlatIndex, BinaryFlatIndex (PR #7 by @marlon-costa-dc)
v0.8.0 — Vue 3 composables, functional filter API, SIMD Euclidean, tech debt reduction
v0.7.0 — SIMD acceleration (2x+ speedup), First Community Contribution (@jsonMartin — 8.75x Hamming)
v0.6.0 — Binary quantization (32x memory), metadata storage, memory pressure API
v0.5.4 — iOS Safari compatibility fixes
v0.5.3 — crates.io publishing fix (package size reduction)
v0.5.2 — npm TypeScript compilation fix
v0.5.0 — Metadata filtering with SQL-like syntax, Filter Playground demo
v0.4.0 — Documentation sprint, benchmark dashboard, chaos testing
v0.3.0 — Soft delete API, compaction, persistence format v3
v0.2.0 — Scalar quantization (SQ8), SIMD optimization
v0.1.0 — Initial release with HNSW indexing

Contributors

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to EdgeVec!

| Contributor | Contribution | |:------------|:-------------| | @jsonMartin | SIMD Hamming distance (PR #4) — 8.75x speedup | | @marlon-costa-dc | BinaryFlatIndex + clippy quality fixes (PR #7, PR #8) |

License

Licensed under either of:

Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.

Built with Rust + WebAssembly

GitHub | npm | crates.io | Demos