AI Security

Vector Storage Calculator

Calculate the storage required for a vector database from the number of embeddings, their dimension and the bytes per value.

Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team

Calculate the storage needed for a vector embedding database.

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Calculate vector database storage

A vector database stores embeddings, each a list of numbers representing a piece of text or other data, and its storage requirement grows with the number of vectors, their dimension and the precision of each value. This calculator multiplies these together to estimate the raw storage, and adds an allowance for the index structures that enable fast similarity search. A million embeddings of dimension fifteen hundred and thirty-six in float32 need about six gigabytes of raw storage.

Lower-precision formats such as float16 or int8 roughly halve or quarter the size, at some cost to retrieval accuracy.

Planning a vector store

Estimating storage upfront helps you choose hardware, select a precision, and budget for a retrieval-augmented generation or semantic search system. The embedding dimension, set by the model you use, has a direct effect, so a higher-dimensional model needs proportionally more storage. Quantizing vectors to lower precision is a common way to cut storage and memory, trading a little accuracy for large savings.

The index overhead allowance reflects the extra structures that approximate-nearest-neighbour search builds on top of the raw vectors. All calculation happens locally in your browser.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How is vector storage calculated?

Multiply the number of vectors by the dimension by the bytes per value. An index overhead is then added for search structures.

Does the embedding dimension matter?

Yes, directly. A higher-dimensional embedding model stores more numbers per vector, increasing storage in proportion to the dimension.

How does quantization help?

Storing values in float16 or int8 instead of float32 roughly halves or quarters the size, saving storage and memory at a small accuracy cost.

Why add index overhead?

Fast similarity search builds index structures on top of the raw vectors, which consume additional space beyond the vectors themselves.

Privacy & Security

Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Data: None
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v1.0

How to Use

Enter the number of vectors, the dimension and the precision.

Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.