Vector Database Storage Calculator
Estimate vector storage size and monthly cost.
With the default inputs, $0.1717/month — 0.69 GB stored. Enter your own numbers below to recompute instantly; the full step-by-step math is shown under the worked example.
Results update automatically as you type.
- Vectors
- 100,000
- Dimensions
- 1,536
- Raw size
- 0.57 GB
- With overhead
- 0.69 GB
- Monthly storage
- $0.1717
Estimate how much storage your vector database needs and what it costs per month. Enter the number of vectors and their dimensions, choose a precision, and see the size in GB plus a monthly storage estimate.
How this is calculated
Raw size = vectors × dimensions × bytes per dimension; we multiply by an index-overhead factor (~1.2) and divide by 1 GB, then × $/GB-month for the monthly storage estimate. Precision (float32 / float16 / int8) sets the bytes per dimension.
Is this a good result? What to do next
Storage is usually a minor RAG cost until you reach tens of millions of vectors. If it's material, dimensions and precision are your levers — quantizing to int8 cuts raw size 4× versus float32.
Typical planning ranges
- 1,536-dim float32 vector
- ~6 KB
- 1M such vectors
- ~5.7 GB raw (pre-overhead)
- Index overhead
- ~20–40%
Ranges are typical planning figures to sanity-check your result, not authoritative benchmarks. Your numbers will vary with use case, volume, and vendor.
How to improve this number
- Use fewer dimensions (smaller model or MRL truncation).
- Quantize vectors to float16 or int8.
- Prune stale or duplicate vectors.
Common mistakes
- Forgetting index overhead on top of raw vector bytes.
- Storing float32 when int8 is accurate enough.
When to use a different approach
For storage plus query cost, use the vector database cost calculator. To compare precisions directly, use the embedding dimension storage calculator.
Worked example (defaults)
With the default inputs above, here is the result:
- Vectors
- 100,000
- Dimensions
- 1,536
- Raw size
- 0.57 GB
- With overhead
- 0.69 GB
- Monthly storage
- $0.1717
- bytes = 100,000 x 1536 x 4
- GB = bytes / 1024^3 x 1.2 overhead
- cost = GB x $0.25/GB-month
Frequently asked questions
How much storage does a vector take?+
Raw size = dimensions x bytes per dimension. A 1,536-dim float32 vector is about 6 KB; a million of them is roughly 5.7 GB before index overhead.