Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ElasticSearch VS Meilisearch

Compare ElasticSearch VS Meilisearch and see what are their differences

ElasticSearch logo ElasticSearch

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

Meilisearch logo Meilisearch

Ultra relevant, instant, and typo-tolerant full-text search API
  • ElasticSearch Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-10
  • 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.

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.

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.

ElasticSearch videos

What is Elasticsearch?

More videos:

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

Meilisearch videos

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

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ElasticSearch and Meilisearch)
Custom Search Engine
73 73%
27% 27
Custom Search
75 75%
25% 25
Search Engine
64 64%
36% 36
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 Meilisearch

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

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, ElasticSearch should be more popular than Meilisearch. It has been mentiond 17 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

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 ElasticSearch and Meilisearch, 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.

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

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

Vespa.ai - Store, search, rank and organize big data

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

Site Search 360 - Site Search 360 enhances and improves your built-in CMS or product search with autocompletion, semantic search, filters, facets, detailed analytics, and a whole lot of customization options.