Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Elasticlunr VS Meilisearch

Compare Elasticlunr VS Meilisearch and see what are their differences

Elasticlunr logo Elasticlunr

Lightweight full-text search engine in Javascript for browser search and offline search.

Meilisearch logo Meilisearch

Ultra relevant, instant, and typo-tolerant full-text search API
  • Elasticlunr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-27
  • Meilisearch Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-12-16

Meilisearch is a powerful, fast, open-source, easy to use, and deploy search engine. The search and indexation are fully customizable and handles features like typo-tolerance, filters, and synonyms.

Elasticlunr features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Elasticlunr is a lightweight full-text search library that can be easily integrated into client-side applications without requiring a separate server or heavy backend processing.
  • Client-Side Operation
    Since Elasticlunr operates entirely on the client side, it reduces the need for server-side search operations, lowering server load and allowing for offline search capabilities.
  • Simple API
    Elasticlunr provides a simple, easy-to-use API which makes implementing search features straightforward, even for developers without specialized search technology expertise.
  • Customizable
    It offers the ability to customize the indexing and search process, allowing developers to tailor it to their needs, such as by configuring stop words or adjusting scoring algorithms.

Possible disadvantages of Elasticlunr

  • Limited Scalability
    Elasticlunr is designed for small datasets and may not perform well with very large data sets due to client-side processing limitations.
  • Memory Consumption
    As Elasticlunr operates in the browser, it relies on the device's memory, which can become a constraint with larger datasets, potentially impacting performance.
  • Minimal Features
    Compared to more robust search solutions like Elasticsearch, Elasticlunr offers a more limited set of features, which may not satisfy applications requiring advanced search functionalities.
  • Browser Dependency
    Being a client-side library, its functionality and performance depend heavily on the user's browser capabilities and the device's processing power.

Meilisearch features and specs

  • Speed
    Meilisearch is optimized for performance and provides very fast search capabilities, often with response times in milliseconds.
  • Relevance
    It offers advanced search features like typo tolerance, synonyms, and configurable ranking rules to ensure highly relevant search results.
  • Ease of Use
    Designed to be user-friendly with a straightforward RESTful API, making it easy to integrate and use.
  • Open Source
    Meilisearch is open source, allowing developers to inspect the code, contribute, and customize it to fit their own needs.
  • Language Support
    It supports multiple languages, ensuring effective full-text search capabilities in various linguistic contexts.
  • Lightweight
    Meilisearch is lightweight and can be deployed on modest hardware, making it suitable for small to medium-sized projects.
  • Real-time Indexing
    It offers real-time indexing, allowing the index to be updated without significant downtime or delay.

Possible disadvantages of Meilisearch

  • Maturity
    As a relatively young project, it may lack some advanced features and optimizations found in more established search solutions like Elasticsearch.
  • Ecosystem
    The ecosystem and community around Meilisearch are still growing, so you might find fewer plugins, extensions, and third-party tools compared to more mature solutions.
  • Scalability
    While suitable for small to medium projects, it might not be as scalable for very large datasets or highly complex queries compared to other search engines like Solr or Elasticsearch.
  • Complex Query Handling
    Meilisearch focuses on simplicity, which means it may lack some of the advanced query capabilities provided by more complex search engines.
  • Documentation
    Though improving, the documentation may not be as comprehensive as that of longer-established projects, which could lead to a steeper learning curve for some users.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Elasticlunr and Meilisearch)
Custom Search Engine
15 15%
85% 85
Custom Search
18 18%
82% 82
Search Engine
12 12%
88% 88
Search API
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Elasticlunr and Meilisearch

Elasticlunr Reviews

We have no reviews of Elasticlunr yet.
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Meilisearch Reviews

5 Open-Source Search Engines For your Website
MeiliSearch is an open-source, blazingly fast and hyper-relevant search engine that will improve your search experience. It provides an extensive toolset for customization. It works out-of-the-box with a preset that easily answers the needs of most applications. Communication is done with a RESTful API because most developers are already familiar with its norms.
Source: vishnuch.tech
MeiliSearch: Zero-config alternative to Elasticsearch, made in Rust | Hacker News
"We send events to our Amplitude instance to be aware of the number of people who use MeiliSearch. We only send the platform on which the server runs once by day. No other information is sent. If you do not want us to send events, you can disable these analytics by using the MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS env variable."
Recommendations for Poor Man's ElasticSearch on AWS?
I'd second these two. I've been following them for quite some time. I even did an extensive research on which one I'd use, and I ended up with Typesense. I don't remember the specific reasoning though. Both seem quite good. MeiliSearch is written in Rust, which makes it more "hipsterish" ;)

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Elasticlunr should be more popular than Meilisearch. It has been mentiond 8 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.

Elasticlunr mentions (8)

  • Mozilla launching "Thundermail" email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365
    I do agree that it is a bad choice, though the reason for this is historical; after quite some testing and comparisons, the best JS-based index I could find at the time was elasticlunr [0]. It may very well be the case that there are better wasm alternatives available currently. Over time I then added a non-JS, external index. Since I already had an ES cluster running elsewhere anyway and the querying of... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Show HN: A fast, accurate and multilingual fuzzy search lib for the front end
    When I did my static site search function some time ago, I used Elasticlunr. I was able to pregenerate the index file as a big json file that is loaded at the client. http://elasticlunr.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: What's the best way to add search to my website?
    If your content is mostly static, you might want to consider pre-building an index and shipping it as a whole. You could look into something like * https://stork-search.net/ (Rust/WASM) * tinysearch: https://github.com/tinysearch/tinysearch (JS, simple, stable) * http://elasticlunr.com/ - based on the former, slightly more sophisticated tuning options. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Self-Contained Search for Archived Static Site?
    There are a few client-side libraries like Lunr [1] or Elasticlunr [2]. For my recent project I went with a server-side approach using Stork [3]. It also provides a script to be used on the client. [1] https://lunrjs.com/ [2] http://elasticlunr.com/ [3] https://stork-search.net/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Writing a Fuzzy Search Component With Preact and Fuse for Astro
    Very nice! Seems to perform very well. I'm curious, have you compared Fuse with other search engines? Like flex search or elasticlunr? Why did you choose fuse ? Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Meilisearch mentions (4)

  • Show HN: Cardstock- Free TCG Proxy Manager for Magic, Yugioh, & Pokemon
    This thing is amazing. Kamal gives me everything I could want (easy console access, easy shell access, a way to manage secrets, a way to see my logs, and letsencrypt support for DNS), all without a PaaS tax. The best part is the accessories feature: https://kamal-deploy.org/docs/commands/accessory/. I am running my main app with two accessories: Meilisearch(https://meilisearch.com) and OpenObserve... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Show HN: Hyvor Blogs – Multi-language blogging platform
    Meilisearch [https://meilisearch.com] for the search index. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Meilisearch, the Rust search engine, just raised $5M
    Meilisearch is an open-source, lightning-fast, and hyper-relevant search engine that fits effortlessly into your apps, websites, and workflow. You can find more info on our website https://meilisearch.com. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Search engines for website
    Algolia.com - new plans are very affordable Meilisearch.com - open source. Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Elasticlunr and Meilisearch, you can also consider the following products

Stork Search - Full-text, WASM-powered search for static sites

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

Sphinx (search engine) - Sphinx is a fulltext FLOSS search engine that provides text search functionality to client applications. Sphinx (search engine) - WikiMili, The Free Encyclopedia - WikiMili, The Free Encyclopedia

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.

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

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