Migrate from FAISS to Qdrant

What You Need from FAISS

Index file path — path to your FAISS index file
Distance metric — the metric used when the index was built (l2, inner product, etc.)

Important: Only non-quantized FAISS index types are supported. Quantized indexes (e.g., IndexIVFPQ) do not store the original vectors and cannot be migrated.

Supported Index Types

FAISS Index Type	Supported	Notes
`IndexFlatL2`	Yes	Maps to `euclid` distance
`IndexFlatIP`	Yes	Maps to `dot` distance
`IndexHNSWFlat`	Yes	Full vectors are stored
`IndexIVFFlat`	Yes	Full vectors are stored
`IndexIVFPQ`	No	Quantized — original vectors not stored
`IndexPQ`	No	Quantized — original vectors not stored

Concept Mapping

FAISS	Qdrant	Notes
Index	Collection	One-to-one mapping
Vector (by position)	Point	Position in index becomes point ID

Run the Migration

docker run --net=host --rm -it \
    -v /path/to/your/index:/data \
    registry.cloud.qdrant.io/library/qdrant-migration faiss \
    --faiss.index-path '/data/your-index.index' \
    --qdrant.url 'https://your-instance.cloud.qdrant.io:6334' \
    --qdrant.api-key 'your-qdrant-api-key' \
    --qdrant.collection 'your-collection' \
    --qdrant.distance-metric cosine

All FAISS-Specific Flags

Flag	Required	Description
`--faiss.index-path`	Yes	Path to the FAISS index file (inside the container)

Qdrant-Side Options

Flag	Default	Description
`--qdrant.distance-metric`	`cosine`	Distance metric: `cosine`, `dot`, `euclid`, or `manhattan`

Gotchas

No metadata: FAISS indexes store only vectors. All points will have empty payloads. If you have a separate metadata store keyed by vector position, import that separately after migration.
Point IDs: Points are assigned IDs based on their position in the FAISS index. Use this to join with any external metadata store.

Next Steps

After migration, verify your data arrived correctly with the Migration Verification Guide.

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