Which Qdrant Deployment Do I Need?
Start with what you need: managed ops or full control? Network latency acceptable or not? Production or prototyping? The answer narrows to one of four options.
Getting Started or Prototyping
Use when: building a prototype, running tests, CI/CD pipelines, or learning Qdrant.
- Use local mode (Python only): zero-dependency, in-memory or disk-persisted, no server needed Local mode
- Local mode data format is NOT compatible with server. Do not use for production or benchmarking.
- For a real server locally, use Docker Quick start
Going to Production (Self-Hosted, You Own Ops)
Use when: you need full control over infrastructure or custom configuration, and are prepared to own operations (upgrades, backups, scaling, monitoring) yourself.
- Docker is the standard self-hosted deployment. Full Qdrant Open Source feature set, minimal setup. Quick start
- You own operations: upgrades, backups, scaling, monitoring
- Must set up distributed mode manually for multi-node clusters Distributed deployment
- Have a data-residency or compliance requirement but don't want to own that ops burden? That combination is Hybrid Cloud (next section), not self-hosted Docker.
Going to Production (Zero-Ops)
Use when: you want managed infrastructure with zero-downtime updates, automatic backups, and resharding without operating clusters yourself — including when data-residency or compliance rules mean the data can't sit on Qdrant-operated infrastructure.
- Qdrant Cloud handles upgrades, scaling, backups, and monitoring Qdrant Cloud
- Chose Qdrant Cloud? See the Managed Cloud quickstart skill to create and connect your first cluster.
- Hybrid Cloud: the same managed control plane, deployed on your own infrastructure/VPC. Use this when data residency or compliance requirements rule out Qdrant Cloud but you still don't want to operate clusters yourself Hybrid Cloud
- Supports multi-version upgrades automatically
- Provides features not available in self-hosted:
/sys_metrics, managed resharding, pre-configured alerts
Need Lowest Possible Latency
Use when: network round-trip to a server is unacceptable. Edge devices, in-process search, or latency-critical applications.
- Qdrant EDGE: in-process bindings to Qdrant shard-level functions, no network overhead Qdrant EDGE
- Same data format as server. Can sync with server via shard snapshots.
- Single-node feature set only. No distributed mode.
- Chose EDGE and want to build on it? See the
qdrant-edgeskill (BM25, snapshot sync, hybrid queries).
What NOT to Do
- Use local mode for production or benchmarking (not optimized, incompatible data format)
- Self-host without monitoring and backup strategy (you will lose data or miss outages)
- Recommend self-managed Docker as the production target when the user says they don't want to operate clusters — that combination needs Qdrant Hybrid Cloud or Qdrant Managed Cloud, not self-hosted
- Choose EDGE when you need distributed search (single-node only)
- Pick Hybrid Cloud unless you have data residency requirements (unnecessary Kubernetes complexity when Qdrant Cloud works)
