Show HN: Mantic.sh – Search 480k files in 0.46s without embeddings

Re:Show HN: Mantic.sh – Search 480k files in 0.46s without e... by oooyay on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @03:40PM (#46518365)

Hello! Cool tool, I'm going to give it a try on my personal assistant. The vector DB prices look a bit cynical to me, even incredible. Do you think you could break down how you arrived at the cost estimation both for competing vector DBs and Mantic? For example, I use Weaviate at the moment and I don't come close to this cost even at a years perspective with a generous amount of usage from multiple users (~60)

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Re:Show HN: Mantic.sh – Search 480k files in 0.46s without e... by marcoaapfortes on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:02PM (#46518682)

Thanks for the kind words and for giving Mantic.sh a spin, excited to hear how it works for your personal assistant!

The cost estimates were rough illustrations for high-usage cloud setups (100 devs × 100 searches/day = ~3.65M queries/year):

Vector embeddings: ~$0.003/query (OpenAI embeddings + managed DB like Pinecone) → $10,950/yr Sourcegraph: Older Enterprise rate (~$91/user/mo) → $109k/yr Mantic: $0 (local, no APIs/DBs)

You're spot on—these are high-end, Weaviate (esp. self-hosted/compressed) can be way cheaper for moderate use like your ~60 users.

I leaned toward worst-case managed pricing to highlight the "no ongoing cost" upside.

Let me know how the trial feels!

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