by Amit Shekhar · 10 September 2026
Vectorless RAG
Vectorless RAG, a way of answering questions from our own documents without converting those documents into numbers and without using any vector database. We will also see how the normal RAG works, why the vector part creates problems, how a Vectorless RAG system reads a document the way a human reads a book, how the tree structure and the search happen step by step, what the advantages and disadvantages are, and when to use which one.
Before you read, guessWhat three components make up the RAG acronym?
Ten seconds, a guess, then read — a wrong guess still makes the answer stick.
What this article covers
- What is an LLM
- What is RAG
- How the normal Vector RAG works
- Problems with Vector RAG
- What is Vectorless RAG
- How Vectorless RAG works
- An example of Vectorless RAG
- Other Vectorless approaches
- Advantages of Vectorless RAG
- Disadvantages of Vectorless RAG
- Vector RAG vs Vectorless RAG
- When to use which one
The article lives on outcomeschool.com. Read it there, then come back: the tutor in the margin has read it and will answer questions, and the questions below check what stayed.