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Apache Solr VS Azure Cognitive Search

Compare Apache Solr VS Azure Cognitive Search and see what are their differences

Apache Solr logo Apache Solr

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on Lucene search library, with XML/HTTP and...

Azure Cognitive Search logo Azure Cognitive Search

Azure Search makes it easy to add powerful and sophisticated search capabilities to your website or...
  • Apache Solr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-28
  • Azure Cognitive Search Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-27

Apache Solr features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Solr is highly scalable, capable of handling large amounts of data and numerous queries per second. It supports distributed search and indexing, which allows for horizontal scaling by adding more nodes.
  • Flexibility
    Solr provides flexible schema management, allowing for dynamic field definitions and easy handling of various data types. It supports a variety of search query types and can be customized to meet specific search requirements.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Solr comes with a wealth of features out-of-the-box, including faceted search, result highlighting, multi-index search, and advanced filtering capabilities. It also offers robust analytics and joins support.
  • Community and Documentation
    Being an open-source project, Apache Solr has a strong community and comprehensive documentation, which ensures continuous improvements, updates, and extensive support resources for developers.
  • Integrations
    Solr integrates well with a variety of databases and data sources, and it provides REST-like APIs for ease of integration with other applications. It also has strong support for popular programming languages like Java, Python, and Ruby.
  • Performance
    Solr is built on top of Apache Lucene, which provides high performance for searching and indexing. It is optimized for speed and can handle rapid data ingestion and real-time indexing.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Solr

  • Complexity
    The initial setup and configuration of Apache Solr can be complex, particularly for those not already familiar with search engines and indexing concepts. Managing a distributed Solr installation also requires considerable expertise.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Solr, especially for large datasets, can be resource-intensive in terms of both memory and CPU. It requires careful tuning and adequate hardware to maintain performance.
  • Learning Curve
    The learning curve for Apache Solr can be steep due to its extensive feature set and the complexity of its configuration options. New users may find it challenging to get up to speed quickly.
  • Consistency Issues
    In distributed setups, ensuring data consistency can be challenging, particularly for users unfamiliar with managing clustered environments. There may be delays or issues with synchronizing indexes across multiple nodes.
  • Maintenance
    Ongoing maintenance of a Solr instance, including monitoring, tuning, and scaling, can be labor-intensive. This requires dedicated effort to keep the system running efficiently over time.
  • Limited Real-time Capabilities
    Although Solr provides near real-time indexing, it may not be as effective as some specialized real-time search engines. For applications requiring truly real-time capabilities, additional solutions might be necessary.

Azure Cognitive Search features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure Cognitive Search can handle large amounts of data and queries, making it suitable for both small and enterprise-level applications.
  • AI-Driven Capabilities
    It incorporates AI-powered features like natural language processing, image recognition, and text analysis to improve search relevance and provide richer search experiences.
  • Integrated Security
    Provides built-in security features such as encryption and identity management, ensuring that your search data is secure.
  • Easy Integration
    Easily integrates with other Azure services and third-party applications, enhancing its utility in a multi-service environment.
  • Customizable Ranking
    Offers features to customize search result rankings and tailor the search experience to specific business needs.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Cognitive Search

  • Complex Pricing Model
    The pricing structure can be complex and may require careful planning to manage costs effectively.
  • Learning Curve
    It might have a steep learning curve for developers unfamiliar with Azure services or cloud-based search solutions.
  • Limited Advanced Search Features
    While powerful, some users may find it lacks certain advanced search features found in specialized search platforms.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud service, it depends on internet connectivity, which might not be ideal for applications requiring offline capabilities.

Apache Solr videos

Solr Index - Learn about Inverted Indexes and Apache Solr Indexing

More videos:

  • Review - Solr Web Crawl - Crawl Websites and Search in Apache Solr

Azure Cognitive Search videos

Azure Search Tutorial - Azure Cognitive Search | AZ-203 | AZ-204

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Solr and Azure Cognitive Search)
Custom Search Engine
84 84%
16% 16
Custom Search
85 85%
15% 15
Search Engine
88 88%
12% 12
Search API
78 78%
22% 22

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Solr and Azure Cognitive Search

Apache Solr Reviews

Top 10 Site Search Software Tools & Plugins for 2022
Apache Solr is optimized to handle high-volume traffic and is easy to scale up or down depending on your changing needs. The near real-time indexing capabilities ensure that your content remains fresh and search results are always relevant and updated. For more advanced customization, Apache Solr boasts extensible plug-in architecture so you can easily plug in index and...
5 Open-Source Search Engines For your Website
Apache Solr is the popular, blazing-fast, open-source enterprise search platform built on Apache Lucene. Solr is a standalone search server with a REST-like API. You can put documents in it (called "indexing") via JSON, XML, CSV, or binary over HTTP. You query it via HTTP GET and receive JSON, XML, CSV, or binary results.
Source: vishnuch.tech
Elasticsearch vs. Solr vs. Sphinx: Best Open Source Search Platform Comparison
Solr is not as quick as Elasticsearch and works best for static data (that does not require frequent changing). The reason is due to caches. In Solr, the caches are global, which means that, when even the slightest change happens in the cache, all indexing demands a refresh. This is usually a time-consuming process. In Elastic, on the other hand, the refreshing is made by...
Source: greenice.net
Algolia Review – A Hosted Search API Reviewed
If you’re not 100% satisfied with Algolia, there are always alternative methods to accomplish similar results, such as Solr (open-source & self-hosted) or ElasticSearch (open-source or hosted). Both of these are built on Apache Lucene, and their search syntax is very similar. Amazon Elasticsearch Service provides a fully managed Elasticsearch service which makes it easy to...
Source: getstream.io

Azure Cognitive Search Reviews

4 Leading Enterprise Search Software to Look For in 2022
It should be mentioned that the Azure cognitive search pricing is fully flexible to the needs of your enterprise. For example, you can decide whether to get more performance by gaining more queries per second or a higher document count each time you use the search. These alterations influence the costs that makes final pricing fully individual based on your needs.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Solr should be more popular than Azure Cognitive Search. It has been mentiond 19 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Solr mentions (19)

  • List of 45 databases in the world
    Solr — Open-source search platform built on Apache Lucene. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Considerations for Unicode and Searching
    I want to spend the brunt of this article talking about how to do this in Postgres, partly because it's a little more difficult there. But let me start in Apache Solr, which is where I first worked on these issues. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Swirl: An open-source search engine with LLMs and ChatGPT to provide all the answers you need 🌌
    Using the Galaxy UI, knowledge workers can systematically review the best results from all configured services including Apache Solr, ChatGPT, Elastic, OpenSearch, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, plus generic HTTP/GET/POST with configurations for premium services like Google's Programmable Search Engine, Miro and Northern Light Research. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Looking for software
    Apache Solr can be used to index and search text-based documents. It supports a wide range of file formats including PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, and plain text files. https://solr.apache.org/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • 'google-like' search engine for files on my NAS
    If so, then https://solr.apache.org/ can be a solution, though there's a bit of setup involved. Oh yea, you get to write your own "search interface" too which would end up calling solr's api to find stuff. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Azure Cognitive Search mentions (4)

  • Make your Azure OpenAI apps compliant with RBAC
    Microsoft offers an array of different AI-powered products, including Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, Azure AI Speech, and their most recent Microsoft Copilot for Office 365. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Show HN: Dera – A platform to manage chunks and embeddings for building RAG apps
    Very cool. I wonder when it makes sense to engineer things at this level vs using something like Azure AI search. [0] Love to see version control on all the things! Wonder if the version control features would be more robust if implemented in Doltgres. [0] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-services/ai-search/ [1] https://github.com/dolthub/doltgresql. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • 🎵 Do you want to build a Chatbot? 🎵
    Azure Cognitive Search may seem out of place in an article on conversational AI, but I do believe that chatbots are really often a form of conversational search. You're interacting with a virtual agent looking for some piece of information or looking to accomplish some task. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Managing the infrastructure of a reusable ecommerce platform with Terraform
    In the ones where we need a persistence layer, we rely on the resources Azure Cosmos DB or Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Other services provide an API to search among a catalog of products with Azure Cognitive Search. As I will explain later, we work with different environments, therefore, creating and updating the resources across them becomes a harder task. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Solr and Azure Cognitive Search, you can also consider the following products

ElasticSearch - Elasticsearch is an open source, distributed, RESTful search engine.

Algolia - Algolia's Search API makes it easy to deliver a great search experience in your apps & websites. Algolia Search provides hosted full-text, numerical, faceted and geolocalized search.

Typesense - Typo tolerant, delightfully simple, open source search 🔍

Amazon CloudSearch - Amazon CloudSearch is a fully-managed service in the cloud that makes it easy to set up, manage, and scale a search solution for your website.

Swiftype - The simplest way to add search to your website or application. Sign up for free.

Meilisearch - Ultra relevant, instant, and typo-tolerant full-text search API