# Amazon Kendra vs Elastic Enterprise Search

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Amazon Kendra

| Attribute | Amazon Kendra | Elastic Enterprise Search |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.4 (55% (medium)) | 40.2 (73% (medium)) |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An AWS-managed service that uses ML and natural language processing to deliver accurate search results and instant answers across structured and unstructured enterprise data. Integrates with generative AI and LLMs for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. It is indexed under AI Enterprise Search.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"What is Amazon Kendra?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Amazon Kendra offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"Is Amazon Kendra free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Amazon Kendra supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"What platforms does Amazon Kendra support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Amazon Kendra, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"Can Amazon Kendra be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 14 integrations for Amazon Kendra, including Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon FSx, Amazon Aurora, Box, Confluence Cloud, Atlassian Confluence Server and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), plus 6 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"What does Amazon Kendra integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed HIPAA and GDPR for Amazon Kendra. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Amazon Kendra not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/security/?nc2=h_dsc_aa_sec","question":"What security certifications does Amazon Kendra have?","confidence":0.7}]` | `[{"answer":"A distributed, full-text and vector search engine that enables organizations to ingest, analyze, and act on data at scale. Available as open source, managed cloud service, or self-hosted with enterprise features for security monitoring, observability, and compliance requirements. It is indexed under AI Enterprise Search.","source":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","question":"What is Elastic Enterprise Search?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Elastic Enterprise Search offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans are also available: Free, Elastic Cloud (Managed) and Enterprise Self-Managed. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","question":"Is Elastic Enterprise Search free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Elastic Enterprise Search supports the web, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","question":"What platforms does Elastic Enterprise Search support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Elastic Enterprise Search can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid, on-premise, air-gapped and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","question":"Can Elastic Enterprise Search be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 19 integrations for Elastic Enterprise Search, including Slack, Jira, ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, IBM Resilient, xMatters and Logstash, plus 11 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.elastic.co","question":"What does Elastic Enterprise Search integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed HIPAA and GDPR for Elastic Enterprise Search. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Elastic Enterprise Search not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.elastic.co/legal/trade-compliance","question":"What security certifications does Elastic Enterprise Search have?","confidence":0.7}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A managed machine learning service that enables organizations to create intelligent search experiences across enterprise data sources. It integrates with generative AI models to provide conversational question-answering capabilities through retrieval augmented generation. | An AI-powered search platform available as a managed cloud service or locally deployable application, combining traditional search with generative AI capabilities for enterprise data discovery and analytics. |
| features.capabilities | `{"deployment_model":"managed_cloud_saas","generative_ai_answer_synthesis_rag":true,"bring_your_own_llm_byo_model_support":true,"multi_lingual_semantic_understanding":false,"source_system_rbac_permissions_mirroring":true,"hybrid_dense_and_sparse_lexical_reranking":false,"optical_character_recognition_ocr_for_pdfs":false,"admin_dashboard_for_search_analytics_and_gaps":true,"personalization_based_on_user_department_context":true,"pre_built_native_crawlers_for_100_plus_saas_apps":true}` | `{"pricing_model":"tiered_cloud_consumption","deployment_model":"hybrid","generative_ai_answer_synthesis_rag":true,"bring_your_own_llm_byo_model_support":true,"multi_lingual_semantic_understanding":true,"source_system_rbac_permissions_mirroring":true,"hybrid_dense_and_sparse_lexical_reranking":true,"optical_character_recognition_ocr_for_pdfs":true,"admin_dashboard_for_search_analytics_and_gaps":true,"personalization_based_on_user_department_context":true,"pre_built_native_crawlers_for_100_plus_saas_apps":true}` |
| integrations.count | 14 | 13 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Amazon S3"},{"name":"Amazon RDS"},{"name":"Amazon FSx"},{"name":"Amazon Aurora"},{"name":"Box"},{"name":"Confluence Cloud"},{"name":"Atlassian Confluence Server"},{"name":"Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)"},{"name":"Alfresco On-Prem"},{"name":"Alfresco One"},{"name":"Microsoft SharePoint"},{"name":"Salesforce"},{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"Google Drive"},{"name":"Confluence","native":true,"direction":"inbound"}]` | `[{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Jira"},{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"IBM Resilient"},{"name":"xMatters"},{"name":"Logstash"},{"name":"Beats"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry"},{"name":"Elastic Connectors"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"NVIDIA"},{"name":"Alibaba Cloud"},{"name":"IBM watsonx"},{"name":"Vectorize.io"},{"name":"AWS S3"},{"name":"Splunk"},{"name":"Webhooks"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock","native":true,"category":"ai_models"},{"name":"Amazon SageMaker","native":true,"category":"ml_platform"},{"name":"Jina AI","native":true,"category":"ai_models"},{"name":"Cohere","native":true,"category":"ai_models"},{"name":"LangChain","native":true,"category":"ai_framework"},{"name":"Terraform","native":true,"category":"infrastructure_as_code"},{"name":"GitHub Copilot","native":true,"category":"ai_assistant"},{"name":"Elastic Agent","native":true,"category":"monitoring"},{"name":"Elastic APM","native":true,"category":"monitoring"},{"name":"Kubernetes","native":true,"category":"container_orchestration"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T11:09:58.587Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","features":["Distributed search and analytics engine","Basic authentication, RBAC, TLS encryption","OTel, Logstash, Beats integration","Lexical and semantic search","Community forum support"],"description":"Open source, self-hosted Elasticsearch with community support","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Elastic Cloud (Managed)","features":["Production-focused support with weekend coverage","Hosted on major cloud providers","Cluster analysis and optimization guidance"],"description":"Fully managed deployment on AWS, GCP, or Azure with limited support","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise Self-Managed","features":["24/7 expert support (1-15 minute response SLA)","GDPR, HIPAA, FedRAMP compliance controls","Searchable snapshots for reduced storage costs","AI/ML features: ELSER semantic search, Jina multilingual embeddings, anomaly detection","Elastic Workflows for incident response automation","Field and document-level security","SAML/SSO and audit logging","Elastic Agent Builder for RAG applications","Third-party LLM inference management"],"description":"Self-hosted on your infrastructure with advanced security, compliance, and AI capabilities","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free open source tier. Managed cloud from $0. Enterprise self-managed pricing available upon request.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T11:04:49.710Z","freeTrialDays":14,"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.95 |
| security.fedramp | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.hipaa | yes | yes |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.trust_center | https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/?nc2=h_dsc_aa_cmp | https://www.elastic.co/legal/ethics-and-compliance |

## Capabilities (AI Enterprise Search)

| Capability | Amazon Kendra | Elastic Enterprise Search |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Capabilities** |  |  |
| Deployment model | Managed cloud saas | Hybrid |
| Source system RBAC permissions mirroring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Generative AI answer synthesis rag | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hybrid dense and sparse lexical reranking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pre built native crawlers for 100 plus saas apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi lingual semantic understanding | ✗ | ✓ |
| Personalization based on user department context | ✓ | ✓ |
| Optical character recognition OCR for pdfs | ✗ | ✓ |
| Admin dashboard for search analytics and gaps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bring your own LLM byo model support | ✓ | ✓ |
| SOC2 type ii | - | - |
| HIPAA compliance for medical records | - | - |
| Pricing model | - | Tiered cloud consumption |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T18:33:36.179Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*