Algolia vs Google Cloud Endpoints

Algolia is an API-first search solution that combines keyword and semantic methods to return results. Its listed capabilities include NeuralSearch, AI Ranking, personalization, AI Synonyms, analytics, A/B testing, merchandising, a crawler, autocomplete, and query categorization. It is presented for site, ecommerce, and enterprise search across retail, manufacturing, media, financial services, and other use cases. Listed integrations include Adobe, BigCommerce, commercetools, Supabase, Shopify, Salesforce, Segment, and Google Tag Manager. Developers can use InstantSearch libraries for JavaScript, React, Vue, Angular, iOS, and Android, alongside API clients for multiple programming languages. Algolia reports an average search response time under 20 milliseconds and more than 1 billion queries processed every 5 seconds. The Free plan costs nothing and includes 10K search requests/month, 50K records, and allowances for recommendation requests and crawls. It has a 1 GB index size and a 20-index maximum per application. Grow and Grow Plus list 100 GB index size and 50 indices; hosting locations vary by plan.

Google Cloud Endpoints manages APIs with tools for securing access, monitoring activity, analyzing usage, and setting quotas. It supports API descriptions written in OpenAPI 2.0 or 3.x, as well as gRPC, and provides management through ESP or ESPv2. Documented deployment backends include Google Kubernetes Engine, Compute Engine, Kubernetes, App Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Run functions, and Knative serving; proxy availability varies by backend. Endpoints is optimized for Docker and can host an API wherever Docker runs, provided it has internet access to Google Cloud. API keys can be required and validated to identify a Google Cloud project for quotas, billing, and monitoring. Documented user authentication options include Firebase Authentication and Auth0, using JWT validation by ESP. Logs and metrics are viewable in the Google Cloud console. Pricing depends on API calls and Service Control calls: the Free usage tier is free for 1,999,999 calls; Standard is $3 a month for 2,000,000 to 1,000,000,000; and High-volume is $1.50 a month for 1,000,000,000 and above. Listed rates are per million API calls.