Elasticsearch vs Meilisearch
Elasticsearch
elastic.coMeilisearch
meilisearch.comSide by side
| Figure | Elasticsearch | Meilisearch |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $99/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 3 |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.3 (#10) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · Site Search Software | 8.3 (#9) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Spec score · Search & Vector Database Platforms | 8.3 (#8) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Spec score · Search Engine Software | 8.4 (#5) | 8.5 (#4) |
| Founded | 2012 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Mountain View, California, United States | Paris, France |
| Integrations | Elastic describes 350+ integrations and supports ingestion through Elastic Agent, connectors, APIs, language clients, and Logstash. | Official SDKs, plugins, and integrations cover major programming languages and frameworks, including JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java, .NET, Swift, and Dart. |
Plans
Elasticsearch
- BasicPriced on request
- Standard$99 a month
- Gold$114 a month
- Platinum$131 a month
- Enterprise$184 a month
- Elastic Cloud HostedPrice not published
- Elastic Cloud ServerlessPrice not published
- Self-managed ElasticsearchPriced on request
In their own words
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.