Comparison

Amazon Kendra vs Vespa

On the evidence we track, Vespa leads this comparison with a composite score of 58/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Amazon Kendra52
★Vespa58
Score
vioscaleAI score
Amazon Kendra52 / 100medium · 55%
Vespa58 / 100high · 75%
Pricing
Free tier
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✓
Model
Amazon Kendrafreemium
Vespafree
Price level
Amazon Kendralow
Vespafree
Transparent
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✗
Integrations
Count
Amazon Kendra14
Vespa12
Security
Disclosure policy
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa✓
Fedramp
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa–
Gdpr
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✓
Hipaa
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa–
Pci
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa–
Scorecard
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa5.9
Soc2
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa✓
Reliability
Status page
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa7
Github stars
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa7,129
Activity
Commits last 30d
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa100
Release
Cadence days
Amazon Kendra–
Vespa3
History
Amazon Kendra–
License
Spdx
Amazon Kendra–
Language
Primary
Amazon Kendra–
VespaJava
Market
Content
Faq
Amazon Kendra6 items
Vespa8 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for ai enterprise search. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

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

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Amazon Kendra

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.

Independently observed

Vespa

Leader

A distributed search and AI platform that handles vectors, tensors, text, and structured data at scale, delivering sub-100ms query latency with continuous data updates and machine-learned relevance ranking.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Amazon Kendra

Usage-basedFree tier
as of verify ↗

Vespa

Leader
FreeFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✓
CLI
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Amazon Kendra✓
Vespa✓
Self-hosted
Amazon Kendra✗
Vespa✓
Hybrid
Amazon Kendra✗
Vespa✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Amazon Kendra

15 total
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon RDS
  • Amazon FSx
  • Amazon Aurora
  • Box
  • Confluence Cloud
  • Atlassian Confluence Server
  • Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
  • Alfresco On-Prem
  • Alfresco One
  • Microsoft SharePoint
  • Salesforce
  • ServiceNow
  • Google Drive
  • Confluence
Independently observed

Vespa

Leader
12 total
  • Python
  • Cohere
  • TwelveLabs
  • Claude Code
  • OpenAI Codex
  • Google Gemini
  • Cursor
  • VSCode
  • IntelliJ
  • PyCharm
  • AWS
  • GCP
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Amazon Kendra or Vespa: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.