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Meilisearch VS Apache Lucene

Compare Meilisearch VS Apache Lucene and see what are their differences

Meilisearch logo Meilisearch

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

Apache Lucene logo Apache Lucene

High-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java.
  • 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.

  • Apache Lucene Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-20

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.

Apache Lucene features and specs

  • High Performance
    Lucene is known for its high-performance indexing and searching capabilities, which makes it suitable for handling large volumes of data efficiently.
  • Scalability
    Lucene can scale effectively to handle large datasets and accommodate growing data needs without significant performance degradation.
  • Flexible Querying
    It offers a rich query language and supports complex queries, allowing developers to perform precise and advanced searches.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Lucene is free to use and has a supportive community, which enhances its features through contributions and plugins.
  • Extensive Ecosystem
    Lucene is part of a larger ecosystem with tools like Apache Solr and Elasticsearch, which provide additional functionalities and easier management.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Lucene

  • Complexity
    Lucene can be complex to set up and configure, requiring a good understanding of indexing and search concepts.
  • Limited Out-of-the-box Features
    Lucene is a low-level library and lacks some of the out-of-the-box features found in higher-level search platforms, necessitating more custom development.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Developers need to invest time to understand its API and functionalities fully, which can be challenging for beginners.
  • Java Dependency
    As a Java-based library, Lucene requires a Java environment, which might not suit all development stacks or teams preferring other languages.
  • No Built-in Distributed Features
    Lucene itself does not handle distributed search and indexing natively, requiring integration with other tools like Solr or Elasticsearch for distributed capabilities.

Meilisearch videos

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Apache Lucene videos

Paper Review - "Apache Lucene 4." SIGIR 2012 workshop on open source information retrieval

More videos:

  • Review - Fundamentals of Information Retrieval, Illustration with Apache Lucene

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Meilisearch and Apache Lucene)
Custom Search Engine
78 78%
22% 22
Search Engine
83 83%
17% 17
Custom Search
77 77%
23% 23
Databases
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 Meilisearch and Apache Lucene

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" ;)

Apache Lucene Reviews

5 Open-Source Search Engines For your Website
Apache Lucene is a free and open-source search engine software library, originally written completely in Java. It is supported by the Apache Software Foundation and is released under the Apache Software License. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.
Source: vishnuch.tech

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Lucene should be more popular than Meilisearch. It has been mentiond 7 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.

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 / about 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

Apache Lucene mentions (7)

  • Looking for small libraries implemented in multiple langauges
    I have to find a few examples of relatively small programming libraries that has been rewritten/ported to C++, C# and Java. Example: Lucene (it isn't that small, but still shows what I'm looking for). Source: over 2 years ago
  • HBO Max needs to stop purging its content.
    He is talking about impacting the search algorithm. Putting a “+” sounds like it is negatively impacting search quality. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Whoever worked on Steam's search engine needs a raise.
    For example Lucene is a core project common to many search engines, lots of things built ontop of it. And there are similar libraries Https://lucene.apache.org/core/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Prometheus vs Elasticsearch stack - Key concepts, features, and differences
    Full-text search Elasticsearch is built on top of Apache Lucene, an open-source information retrieval software. Apache Lucene enables Elasticsearch can perform complex full-text searches using a single or combination of word phrases against its No SQL database. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • A simple but efficient algorithm for searching a large dataset of objects?
    If I had control of the back end I would implement a full-text engine such as Lucene. Generate the lookup table as a batch job and then perform the FTS when the request comes in. If you try to do this real-time, your search will take exponentially longer the larger the data set gets. Source: about 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

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.

OpenSearch - OpenSearch is a community-driven, open source search and analytics suite derived from Apache 2.0 licensed Elasticsearch 7.10.2 & Kibana 7.10.2. It consists of a search engine daemon, and a visualization and user interface, OpenSearch Dashboards.

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

Google Cloud Search - Search across all your company's content in G Suite.