Algolia vs Meilisearch
Algolia
algolia.com
Meilisearch
meilisearch.comSide by side
| Figure | Algolia | Meilisearch |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.50/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 3 |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 9.5 (#1) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · AI Search and Discovery Platforms Software | 9.5 (#1) | 8.3 (#7) |
| Spec score · Site Search Software | 9.5 (#1) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Spec score · Search & Vector Database Platforms | 9.5 (#1) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Spec score · Search Engine Software | 9.5 (#1) | 8.5 (#4) |
| Founded | 2012 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Paris, France |
| Integrations | Prebuilt integrations include Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C and commercetools, plus Segment and Google Tag Manager connectors. | Official SDKs, plugins, and integrations cover major programming languages and frameworks, including JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java, .NET, Swift, and Dart. |
| What it does | Algolia is a hosted search and discovery platform that lets companies index their own data and expose fast search through APIs and user interfaces. | Meilisearch is a flexible, powerful user-focused search engine that can be added to any website or application. |
Plans
Algolia
- GrowPriced on request
- Grow PlusPriced on request
- ElevatePriced on request
- FreeFree
- Grow$0.50 a month
- Grow Plus$1.75 a month
- ElevatePrice not published
In their own words
Algolia
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.
Meilisearch
Meilisearch is a search engine that can be added to websites and applications, with self-hosted and cloud deployment options. Full-text search includes automatic typo tolerance and relevance ranking; hybrid search combines keyword precision with semantic understanding. The product also provides retrieval infrastructure for RAG with hybrid retrieval and LangChain support, alongside faceted, federated, multimodal, personalized, and conversational search. Meilisearch supports more than 30 languages with automatic language detection and smart tokenization. Its SDKs, plugins, and integrations cover programming languages and frameworks including JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java,.NET, Swift, and Dart. The company says results return in under 50 milliseconds for typical workloads. Self-hosting costs nothing under the MIT license, but users manage infrastructure, updates, backups, and scaling. Cloud starts at $20 a month, with a 14-day free trial, usage- or resource-based billing, and email support. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes dedicated resources and Slack support. Meilisearch says its security measures include encryption, monitoring, assessments, and compliance measures including GDPR and SOC 2 Type 2.