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Apache Solr VS Elastic Stack

Compare Apache Solr VS Elastic Stack 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...

Elastic Stack logo Elastic Stack

Meet the search platform that helps you search, solve, and succeed
  • Apache Solr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-28
  • Elastic Stack Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-04-20

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.

Elastic Stack features and specs

  • Scalability
    Elastic Stack is designed to scale horizontally, enabling you to add more nodes to handle increased loads and data sizes seamlessly.
  • Real-Time Data Processing
    Provides capabilities for real-time data ingestion and processing, making it suitable for use cases like monitoring and logging where timely insights are critical.
  • Powerful Search and Analytics
    Offers powerful full-text search capabilities through Elasticsearch, along with data visualization tools via Kibana for insightful analytics.
  • Flexible Data Ingestion
    Supports various data ingestion methods and sources including Logstash, Beats, and direct API calls, allowing for flexible data integrations.
  • Open Source and Mature Ecosystem
    Being open-source, Elastic Stack benefits from a large community, robust documentation, and a mature ecosystem of plugins and integrations.

Possible disadvantages of Elastic Stack

  • Complexity in Setup and Management
    Setting up and managing an Elastic Stack cluster can be complex and may require significant expertise, especially with larger deployments.
  • Resource Intensive
    Elastic Stack can be resource-intensive in terms of CPU, memory, and storage, which may necessitate substantial infrastructure investments.
  • Security Considerations
    While Elastic Stack includes security features, properly securing a deployment involves additional configuration and possibly extra licensing costs.
  • Cost for Paid Features
    Certain advanced features, such as machine learning, are part of the paid Elastic subscriptions, which can add to costs for enterprise users.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Mastering the Elastic Stack's wide range of functionalities and configurations can be challenging, especially for new users without prior experience.

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

Elastic Stack videos

No Elastic Stack videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Solr and Elastic Stack)
Custom Search Engine
100 100%
0% 0
Office & Productivity
0 0%
100% 100
Custom Search
100 100%
0% 0
File Management
0 0%
100% 100

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 Elastic Stack

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

Elastic Stack Reviews

10 Best Grafana Alternatives [2023 Comparison]
The appeal to Elastic Stack is that it doesn’t cost anything to download and use. Of course, like any open-source solution, there will be additional management costs. That being said, once it’s installed, you will gain instant access to all the tools listed above. Using these tools, you can ship data from multiple sources, process it, and then subsequently store it in a...
Source: sematext.com
10 Best Linux Monitoring Tools and Software to Improve Server Performance [2022 Comparison]
Lastly, the Elastic Stack (ELK Stack) is a well-known tool for Linux performance monitoring. It’s composed of Elasticsearch (full-text search), Logstash (a log aggregator), Kibana (visualization via graphs and charts), and Beats (lightweight metrics collectors and shippers).
Source: sematext.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Solr seems to be more popular. 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: about 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

Elastic Stack mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Elastic Stack yet. Tracking of Elastic Stack recommendations started around Apr 2024.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Solr and Elastic Stack, you can also consider the following products

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

ElasticHQ - Tool for ElasticSearch management and monitoring.

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.

LogFusion - Log fusion is a software that helps you to display and monitor your log files in real-time by relying on this lightweight application that features a massive range of useful function.

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

Xapian - Xapian is an open source probabilistic information retrieval library, released under the GNU...