Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ElasticSearch VS Lucene

Compare ElasticSearch VS Lucene and see what are their differences

ElasticSearch logo ElasticSearch

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

Lucene logo Lucene

Search Engines
  • ElasticSearch Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-10
  • Lucene Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-01

ElasticSearch features and specs

  • Scalability
    ElasticSearch is highly scalable, allowing you to handle large volumes of data and distribute indexing and search tasks across multiple nodes.
  • Real-Time Data
    It provides real-time indexing and searching capabilities, making it suitable for applications that require up-to-the-minute data retrieval and analysis.
  • Full-Text Search
    ElasticSearch is well-known for its powerful full-text search capabilities, enabling complex search queries and supporting a wide range of search options.
  • Complex Query Support
    It offers a rich query language allowing for complex and nested searching with filters, aggregations, and more.
  • Distributed Architecture
    ElasticSearch is designed to be distributed by nature, making it resilient to node failures and allowing data and search requests to be distributed across a cluster.
  • Open Source
    ElasticSearch is open-source, offering flexibility and a large community of developers that contribute to its continuous improvement and support.
  • Analytics
    Besides search, it also supports powerful analytics and visualization tools, especially when integrated with Kibana, its visualization dashboard.
  • Integrations
    ElasticSearch can easily integrate with various data sources and frameworks, enhancing its usability across different applications.

Possible disadvantages of ElasticSearch

  • Complexity
    Operating ElasticSearch can be complex, particularly when dealing with large-scale deployments, requiring specialized knowledge and expertise.
  • Resource Intensive
    ElasticSearch can be resource-intensive, requiring significant amounts of RAM and CPU, which can be costly for large-scale operations.
  • Consistency
    As a distributed system, ElasticSearch can sometimes face consistency issues, especially in scenarios involving partitions or network failures.
  • Security
    Though security features are available, they often require additional configurations and are more robust in the paid versions, which can be a concern for open-source users.
  • Cost
    While the core ElasticSearch software is open-source, scaling and additional features (like security, monitoring, and machine learning) are part of the paid Elastic Stack offerings.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a steep learning curve associated with mastering ElasticSearch and its query DSL (Domain Specific Language), which can be a barrier for new users.
  • Maintenance
    Properly maintaining an ElasticSearch cluster requires ongoing management, monitoring, and tuning to ensure optimal performance.
  • Backup and Restore
    Managing backups and restores can be cumbersome and is not as straightforward as in some other databases or data storage solutions.

Lucene features and specs

  • High Performance
    Lucene is designed for high-performance indexing and searching. It can handle large volumes of data and provide fast search results, making it suitable for applications requiring quick data retrieval.
  • Scalability
    Lucene is highly scalable, capable of managing and performing well with large datasets. Its performance remains consistent across varying data sizes, which is critical for growing applications.
  • Flexibility and Customizability
    Lucene offers a high degree of flexibility and customizability, allowing developers to tailor search capabilities to specific needs, including custom scoring, tokenization, and ranking algorithms.
  • Rich Features
    Lucene provides a comprehensive set of features such as term boosting, wildcard queries, proximity searches, and more, which enhance its search capabilities for complex querying needs.
  • Open Source Community
    As an Apache project, Lucene benefits from a robust open-source community, ensuring continuous updates, improvements, and support, fostering a reliable and well-maintained codebase.

Possible disadvantages of Lucene

  • Complexity
    Lucene's comprehensive feature set leads to complexity in understanding and configuring the system, which might pose a learning curve for new users.
  • Java Dependency
    Lucene is written in Java, which may require specific knowledge or adaptations to integrate into systems primarily using other programming languages.
  • Limited to Full-Text Search
    While Lucene excels at full-text search, it might not be the best choice for applications requiring advanced data analytics, which may require integration with other data processing tools.
  • Resource Intensive
    Lucene can be resource-intensive, particularly during indexing operations, requiring careful management of memory and storage to achieve optimal performance.

ElasticSearch videos

What is Elasticsearch?

More videos:

  • Review - Real world Elasticsearch Compose/Stack File Review
  • Demo - Elastic Search

Lucene videos

Lucene Indexing Tutorial | Solr Indexing Tutorial | Search Engine Indexing | Solr Tutorial |Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Lucene Search Essentials: Scorers, Collectors and Custom Queries, Mikhail Khludnev
  • Review - Television News Search and Analysis with Lucene/Solr

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ElasticSearch and Lucene)
Custom Search Engine
87 87%
13% 13
Custom Search
88 88%
12% 12
Search Engine
85 85%
15% 15
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 ElasticSearch and Lucene

ElasticSearch Reviews

Log analysis: Elasticsearch vs Apache Doris
Benchmark tests with ES Rally, the official testing tool for Elasticsearch, showed that Apache Doris was around 5 times as fast as Elasticsearch in data writing, 2.3 times as fast in queries, and it consumed only 1/5 of the storage space that Elasticsearch used. On the test dataset of HTTP logs, it achieved a writing speed of 550 MB/s and a compression ratio of 10:1.
4 Leading Enterprise Search Software to Look For in 2022
“ We’ve built some big data search and mobile desktop applications that help our customers experience fast natural language search. Some applications require this, where I need to find data, I don’t want to build some complex query, I just need to ask the system “help me search for this information, narrow my results” and I don't want to wait several seconds. We’ve built a...
Top 10 Site Search Software Tools & Plugins for 2022
Elasticsearch is built for human users, which means that it’s equipped to handle mistakes that humans often make such as typos. This helps to improve search relevance and enhance the overall search experience. It offers real-time crawling, which automatically detects changes in content and ensures that search results are fresh and relevant.
Best Elasticsearch alternatives for search
However, when it comes to dealing with synonyms (i.e. ‘smart phone’ for ‘Samsung Galaxy’), slang (i.e. ‘kicks’ for ‘Nike Air Jordans’) and context (i.e. ‘car park’ is different to ‘dog park’) – you have to set up a bunch of manual rules/definitions with Elasticsearch and co.
Source: relevance.ai
5 Open-Source Search Engines For your Website
Elasticsearch provides key features like Advanced Full-Text Search Capabilities like Data indexing, Search capabilities including phrases, wildcards, auto suggestions, filters & facets, etc... Elasticsearch can also be used for other use-cases like
Source: vishnuch.tech

Lucene Reviews

We have no reviews of Lucene yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Lucene should be more popular than ElasticSearch. It has been mentiond 26 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.

ElasticSearch mentions (17)

  • ElasticSearch from the Azure store or from Elastic.co?
    What surprised me is that on the Azure store, the only option I see is (Pay as you go), whereas on elastic.co there are the standard platinum and enterprise tiers followed by a where to deploy page and a pricing overview. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Hunspell on elastic.co cloud
    Can anyone help me how to upload custom hunspell stemmer files to elastic cloud (elastic.co)? According to elastic docs it should go under elasticsearch/config/hunspell, but according to cloud docs I should upload it via features/extension tab. So I tried zipping the hunspell folder and uploading it. I also figured out that it should be in the dictionaries folder, but after uploading it still doesn't work. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Creating a modern, SaaS website.. what am I missing?
    I can't figure out where I have to go to get more or less of a custom, premium website. I should mention that I look up to websites like elastic.co for example, would be very happy with something like that. I could really use some guidance! Source: about 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2022)
    Elastic | Multiple software engineering roles | REMOTE (EMEA) | Full-time | https://elastic.co Elastic offers solutions for security and observability that are built on a single, open technology stack that can be deployed anywhere. Elastic Security enables security teams to prevent, detect, and respond to attacks with a solution built atop the speed and reliable of the Elastic stack. The Security External... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Seeking clarification about which part of ElasticSearch to use for our website
    I have been trying to digest the elastic.co website to try to understand how we can use elastic search, but I've come to a point where I'm not sure which part of elastic, (if any) makes sense for us. In fact I am royally confused. I wonder if anyone here can help clarify? Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Lucene mentions (26)

  • Testing MongoDB Atlas Search Java Apps Using TestContainers
    MongoDB Atlas Search is an extension to the built-in indexing capabilities that are part of MongoDB itself, using the awesome open source indexing and query library Lucene. MongoDB has built a wrapper around Lucene called mongot. Mongot has two responsibilities: First, it follows the change stream of any collection you choose to index and builds Lucene indexes asynchronously. Second, when you run the $search... - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • Integrating Full-Text Search with Hibernate Search in a Java Application
    Implementing full-text search in an application can be challenging, but Hibernate Search simplifies the process by offering a built-in solution that requires minimal configuration. It seamlessly integrates with powerful search engines like Elasticsearch and Lucene, enabling efficient and scalable search capabilities. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Unveiling Apache Lucene: Open Source Innovation, Funding, and Community
    In today’s digital landscape, open source projects are the engines of innovation that drive technological progress and collaboration. One such powerhouse is Apache Lucene. Recognized as one of the most advanced high-performance text search engine libraries, Apache Lucene not only excels technically but also sets a benchmark in open source business models and sustainable funding. In this post, we delve into... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Lucene and I
    It just be this easy with a little Java elbow grease. And because it’s fairly straightforward to send data into Lucene and then query it powerfully, and because Mr. Cutting nurtured such a benevolent, inviting yet demanding, open source environment, an entire ecosystem of add-ons, forks, ports, wrappers, and companies, and ... And ... AND! - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Considerations for Unicode and Searching
    Solr is based on the Lucene library, as is Elastic. I mention this because these two search engines provide most private web site search capabilities on the internet. I started using Lucene around 25 years ago in Perl - it works well. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ElasticSearch and Lucene, you can also consider the following products

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.

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

Daux.io - Daux.io is a documentation generator that uses a simple folder structure and Markdown files to...

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

DocFX - A documentation generation tool for API reference and Markdown files!

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