--- title: Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of... description: pgvector 0.7.x introduces the halfvec type (16-bit half-precision floats) as an alternative to the standard vector type (32-bit floats), cutting vector and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost | daily.dev og:description: pgvector 0.7.x introduces the halfvec type (16-bit half-precision floats) as an alternative to the standard vector type (32-bit floats), cutting vector and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/T7aujnq9o.png og:image:alt: Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost **[Neon](https://daily.dev/sources/neontech)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary pgvector 0.7.x introduces the halfvec type (16-bit half-precision floats) as an alternative to the standard vector type (32-bit floats), cutting vector and index storage by ~50%, reducing index build time by 23%, and halving prewarming time — all with equivalent query performance and recall. Tests used the DBpedia 1M 1536-dimension dataset on a Neon Postgres instance with HNSW indexes. Binary quantization (BQ) was also evaluated but showed insufficient recall for production use with 1536-dimension embeddings, warranting further investigation with higher-dimensional models. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Scale pgvector with binary quantization on Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL](https://daily.dev/posts/scale-pgvector-with-binary-quantization-on-amazon-aurora-postgresql-a9xxlb7je) · AWS Database Blog · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The reason your pgvector benchmark is lying to you](https://daily.dev/posts/the-reason-your-pgvector-benchmark-is-lying-to-you-deuqnlu3d) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Case Against pgvector](https://daily.dev/posts/the-case-against-pgvector-amqbtam6f) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Supercharge pgvector: 4x Faster HNSW with AlloyDB](https://daily.dev/posts/supercharge-pgvector-4x-faster-hnsw-with-alloydb-tkk8hpcfr) · Google Cloud · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [You Don't Need a Vector Database, Postgres Already Has pgvector](https://daily.dev/posts/you-don-t-need-a-vector-database-postgres-already-has-pgvector-d62seekr1) · Prisma Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql), [#vector-search](https://daily.dev/tags/vector-search), [#embeddings](https://daily.dev/tags/embeddings), [#pgvector](https://daily.dev/tags/pgvector) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T06:57:37.418Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T06:59:03.495Z","description":"pgvector 0.7.x introduces the halfvec type (16-bit half-precision floats) as an alternative to the standard vector type (32-bit floats), cutting vector and...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/54834d9d0a8bd240c627a65e80d548f5?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/54834d9d0a8bd240c627a65e80d548f5?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Neon","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Neon","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--65EDghou--/f_auto/v1724339118/logos/neontech","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/neontech"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-use-vector-use-halvec-instead-and-save-50-of-your-storage-cost-t7aujnq9o","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"data-science,postgresql,vector-search,embeddings,pgvector","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Neon","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/neontech"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Don’t use vector. Use halvec instead and save 50% of your storage cost"}]} ```