OpenSearch vs Soda
OpenSearch
opensearch.orgSoda
soda.ioSide by side
| Figure | OpenSearch | Soda |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $750/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Anomaly Detection Software | 7.8 (#6) | 8.5 (#2) |
| Deployment | OpenSearch can run on premises or in hybrid and multicloud environments. | Soda offers three deployment models based on infrastructure and data privacy needs. |
| Founded | 2021 | 2019 |
| License | OpenSearch uses the Apache License version 2.0, which permits use, modification, extension, embedding, monetization, and resale. | Soda Core changed from Apache 2.0 to Elastic License 2.0 in January 2026; the source remains readable and modifiable but cannot be offered as a competing hosted service. |
| Purpose | OpenSearch is a community-driven, open-source search and analytics suite for ingesting, searching, visualizing, and analyzing data. | Soda is a data quality platform for monitoring data quality, catching problems early, understanding issues at source, and taking action. |
| Support | The project points users to its community forum for answers and peer support. | Soda lists premium support as an Enterprise feature and provides a support contact at [email protected]. |
Plans
In their own words
OpenSearch
OpenSearch is a free, community-driven, open-source suite for ingesting, searching, visualizing, and analyzing data. It includes a data store and search engine, OpenSearch Dashboards, and the Data Prepper server-side collector. Search functions include full-text and field queries, multi-index search, field boosting, score-based ranking, sorting, and aggregations. The project identifies search, observability, and security analytics as application areas, including log analysis, threat intelligence, and event correlation. Listed machine-learning and AI capabilities include vector search and anomaly detection. OpenSearch can be deployed on premises or in hybrid and multicloud environments. Its Apache License 2.0 permits use, modification, extension, embedding, monetization, and resale. It is compatible with Beats, Fluent Bit, and Fluentd for ingestion and processing. A read-only ODBC driver for Windows and macOS connects tools such as Tableau, Microsoft Excel, and Power BI to the SQL plugin. Dashboards provides visualizations and an interface for plugins including security, alerting, Index State Management, and SQL. The downloads page warns that minimal distributions lack security features and are intended for carefully controlled environments or embedding in another service.
Soda
Soda is a data quality platform for monitoring production data, testing data through development and deployment, and investigating issues. Its machine-learning-powered observability looks for unexpected changes without requiring every rule to be set in advance. Teams can test data during development, deployment, transformation, and CI/CD workflows. Data contracts let producers and consumers specify expected schemas, data types, value ranges, and other constraints. Soda lists integrations including Databricks, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Airflow, dbt, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and PagerDuty, and offers three deployment models for different infrastructure and privacy needs. Its listed database support includes Athena, BigQuery, Databricks SQL, Dremio, DuckDB, Fabric, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redshift, Spark Dataframe, Snowflake, SQL Server, Synapse, and Trino. The Free plan is free and includes pipeline testing, metrics observability, and alerting and ticketing integrations. Team is $750 a month; Enterprise has no listed price. Soda lists SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, DORA, and GDPR under compliance. It was founded in 2019 and lists locations in Chicago, Illinois, and Brussels, Belgium.