alt.hn

8/21/2026 at 12:13:39 AM

Show HN: ParqDB – Vector search in the browser from Parquet over HTTP"

https://search.parqdb.io/

by petrizhang

8/21/2026 at 4:43:41 AM

Amazing, we need more DBs that can be queried from the browser directly. I needed something like this a lot but I ended up using sqlite with ranges instead

by alex7o

8/21/2026 at 4:57:45 AM

Thanks! SQLite with ranges is a pretty neat approach too. It’s great to see more people exploring browser-native databases.

by petrizhang

8/21/2026 at 2:50:11 AM

Doesn't DuckDB do this?

by xnx

8/21/2026 at 3:36:06 AM

Not exactly. DuckDB itself does not have native vector index support; the vector search functionality comes from extensions such as VSS, which use their own index format. Those indexes are managed by DuckDB and are not designed to be shared as standalone artifacts or queried directly from a browser.

ParqDB takes a different approach: the vector index itself is stored in Parquet format. This makes the index a portable dataset that can be published, shared through object storage, and queried directly by clients (including browsers via WASM) without a database server.

More details and examples are available in our GitHub repo: https://github.com/parqdb-io/parqdb

by petrizhang