Elasticsearch
Distributed search and analytics engine for full-text, vector and log search.
Updated · AppBreakup editorial · Self-hosted, Web
Is Elasticsearch free?
Yes, free and open source
Switch from Elasticsearch to
All 4
MeilisearchCloud starting price: $20/month
AlgoliaGrow plan overage: $0.50 per 1K extra searches
TypesenseOpen source
- Verified facts
- 4 of 4
- Alternatives ranked
- 4
- Approved reviews
- 0
- Visits sent from here
- 0
About Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine from Elastic. It stores JSON documents across a cluster and answers full-text, structured, geo and vector queries through a REST API, which makes it the engine behind many site searches, ecommerce catalogs, log platforms and security tools. Recent versions put weight on AI retrieval, with dense and sparse vectors, hybrid search and reranking. Kibana provides dashboards and a UI for exploring data. You can download and run it yourself, deploy it on Kubernetes, or use Elastic Cloud as a hosted or serverless service on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. The source is available under a choice of licences including the AGPL, and paid subscriptions add security, machine learning and support features. It is far more flexible than Algolia-style services, but that flexibility means more tuning, more memory and more operations work, so smaller sites often find lighter engines easier.
Best for: Engineering teams with large or complex search, logging or analytics needs.
Pros and cons
What works
- Scales to very large datasets across many nodes
- Full-text, vector and hybrid search in one engine
- Self-managed, hosted and serverless options
Why people leave
- Needs real tuning and operations work to run well
- Memory-hungry compared with lighter search engines
- Several features need a paid Elastic subscription
Elasticsearch vs Meilisearch, Algolia and Typesense
From each app's listing and the prices verified on its own site. A dash means we haven't verified it yet.
| Attribute | Elasticsearch | Meilisearch | Algolia | Typesense |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Open source | Open source | Free plan + paid | Open source |
| Verified price | — | $20/month | $0.50 per 1K extra searches | — |
| Free plan | Free app | Free app | 10K searches and 50K records a month | Free app |
| Open source | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Platforms | Self-hosted, Web | Self-hosted, Web | Web | Self-hosted, Web |
Top Elasticsearch alternatives
See all 4- 1Meilisearch64.8
Lightweight MIT-licensed engine that gives good results with almost no configuration.
- 2Algolia61.8
Fully managed search with no clusters to operate, for teams that would rather pay per use.
- 3Typesense57.5
Open-source search engine that is far simpler to run, with typo tolerance and faceting out of the box for app and site search.
- 4
Qdrant51.2A dedicated vector engine if your main need is AI retrieval rather than full-text search.
Why people left Elasticsearch
In reviewers' own words, from reviews of the apps they moved to. These are their opinions, not ours.
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Reviews
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Elasticsearch: common questions
What is Elasticsearch?
Elasticsearch: Distributed search and analytics engine for full-text, vector and log search. Best for engineering teams with large or complex search, logging or analytics needs. Available for Web, and you can host it yourself.
Is Elasticsearch free?
Yes. Elasticsearch is free, open-source software that you can host yourself.
Is Elasticsearch open source?
Yes. The source code is on GitHub at elastic/elasticsearch. You can also run it on your own server.
What platforms does Elasticsearch run on?
Elasticsearch is available for Self-hosted and Web.
What are the best alternatives to Elasticsearch?
The highest-ranked Elasticsearch alternatives right now are Meilisearch, Algolia and Typesense. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.
Elasticsearch vs Meilisearch: what's the difference?
Both Elasticsearch and Meilisearch are free and open source. Both run on Web.