landing_page/qdrant-landing/content/documentation/guides/migration.md

title, weight, aliases

title	weight	aliases
Migration	10	../migration

Migrating data between vector databases, especially across regions, platforms, or deployment types, can be a hassle. That’s where the Qdrant Migration Tool comes in. The tool supports all your migration needs, including moving from a self-hosted instance to Qdrant and switching cloud providers.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the migration tool and walk through a practical example of migrating from other vector databases to Qdrant.

What is the Qdrant Migration Tool?

We recently released the Qdrant Migration Tool (beta) to make the process of migrating data between vector databases seamless. The tool:

• Streams vectors in batches from a source Qdrant collection to a target Qdrant collection.
• Works across cloud regions, providers, or deployment types.
• Supports migration of vectors from other providers into Qdrant.

Why use this instead of Qdrant’s Native Snapshotting?

Qdrant supports snapshot-based backups, low-level disk operations built for the same cluster recovery or local backups. These snapshots:

• Require snapshot consistency across nodes.
• Can be hard to port across machines or cloud zones.

On the other hand, the Qdrant Migration Tool:

• Streams data in live batches.
• Can resume interrupted migrations.
• Works even when data is being inserted.
• Supports collection reconfiguration (e.g., change replication, and quantization)
• Supports migrating from other vector DBs (Pinecone, Chroma, Weaviate, etc.)

How to Use the Qdrant Migration Tool

You can run the tool via Docker.

Installation:

docker pull registry.cloud.qdrant.io/library/qdrant-migration

Run migration:

docker run --rm -it \
    -e SOURCE_API_KEY='your-source-key' \
    -e TARGET_API_KEY='your-target-key' \
    registry.cloud.qdrant.io/library/qdrant-migration qdrant \
    --source-url 'https://source-instance.cloud.qdrant.io' \
    --source-collection 'benchmark' \
    --target-url 'https://target-instance.cloud.qdrant.io' \
    --target-collection 'benchmark'

Example: Migrate from Pinecone to Qdrant

Let’s now walk through an example of migrating from Pinecone to Qdrant. Assuming your Pinecone index looks like this:

The information you need from Pinecone is:

• Your Pinecone API key
• The index name
• The index host URL

With that information, you can migrate your vector database from Pinecone to Qdrant with the following command:

docker run --net=host --rm -it registry.cloud.qdrant.io/library/qdrant-migration pinecone \
    --pinecone.index-host 'https://sample-movies-efgjrye.svc.aped-4627-b74a.pinecone.io' \
    --pinecone.index-name 'sample-movies' \
    --pinecone.api-key 'pcsk_7Dh5MW_…' \
    --qdrant.url 'https://5f1a5c6c-7d47-45c3-8d47-d7389b1fad66.eu-west-1-0.aws.cloud.qdrant.io:6334' \
    --qdrant.api-key 'eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5c…' \
    --qdrant.collection 'sample-movies' \
    --migration.batch-size 64

When the migration is complete, you will see the new collection on Qdrant with all the vectors.

Tips & Best Practices

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when using the Qdrant migration tool:

• Run the tool close to both source and target to minimize latency.
• The vector size and distance function must match.
• Always test with a small collection first to validate the setup.

Conclusion

The Qdrant Migration Tool makes data transfer across vector database instances effortless. Whether you're moving between cloud regions, upgrading from self-hosted to Qdrant Cloud, or switching from other databases such as Pinecone, this tool saves you hours of manual effort. Try it today.