Elasticsearch vs Vespa
Elasticsearch
elastic.coVespa
vespa.aiSide by side
| Figure | Elasticsearch | Vespa |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $99/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 7 |
| Spec score · Vector Databases | 8.5 (#4) | 8.8 (#3) |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 8.4 (#7) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.3 (#10) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Site Search Software | 8.3 (#9) | 8.6 (#3) |
| Deployment | It can run on premises, in the cloud, across clouds, or as a managed serverless service. | Vespa can be self-managed, run with the Vespa Kubernetes Operator, or deployed on Vespa Cloud. |
| Founded | 2012 | Gartner Peer Insights lists Vespa’s founding year as 2023. |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Mountain View, California, United States | Vespa says its headquarters and engineering hub are in Trondheim, Norway. |
| Integrations | Elastic describes 350+ integrations and supports ingestion through Elastic Agent, connectors, APIs, language clients, and Logstash. | Vespa Cloud Enclave can run applications in customer accounts on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. |
| Search | It supports full-text, semantic, and hybrid search with filters, ranking, and reranking. | Vespa supports vector and tensor search, positional text search, and search over structured data. |
| Support | Elastic Cloud Hosted and Serverless offer four support tiers depending on subscription tier. | The Startup plan includes community support only with no SLA; Cloud plans list unlimited support cases, with response times varying by plan. |
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
Vespa
- StartupPrice not published
- BasicPrice not published
- CommercialPrice not published
- EnterprisePrice not published
- StartupFree
- Enterprise *$0.18 a month
- Self ManagedPriced on request
In their own words
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Vespa
Vespa is an AI search platform for online applications that use data, retrieval, ranking, machine-learning inference, and real-time serving. It supports vector and tensor search, positional text search, and queries over structured data. Ranking signals can be combined with tensor functions or machine-learned models, including ONNX and XGBoost formats; model inference can use ONNX Runtime. Vespa distributes functions across node clusters and allows cluster size changes without affecting queries or writes. Teams can self-manage deployments, use the Vespa Kubernetes Operator, or run on Vespa Cloud. Local deployment guidance lists Linux, macOS, and Windows 10 Pro on x86_64 or arm64 with Docker Desktop or Podman Desktop. Vespa Cloud includes encryption at rest and in transit, certificates for nodes and endpoints, and automatic operating system patching. Its trial provides $300 in credits without requiring a credit card, then stops the application when credits are used. Cloud plans have quotas, and Startup is limited to development zones. Pricing is listed from $0.05 a month, with metered resource rates.