Comparison

Apache Solr vs Elasticsearch

On the evidence we track, Elasticsearch leads this comparison with a composite score of 73/100. 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.
Apache Solr49
★Elasticsearch73
Score
vioscaleAI score
Apache Solr49 / 100low · 34%
Elasticsearch73 / 100medium · 58%
Pricing
Free tier
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✗
Model
Apache Solropen_source
Elasticsearchcommercial
Price level
Apache Solrfree
Elasticsearchhigh
Starting price
Apache Solr–
Elasticsearch$99
Transparent
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Integrations
Count
Apache Solr10
Elasticsearch350
Reliability
Sla pct
Apache Solr–
Elasticsearch99.95
Status page
Apache Solr–
Elasticsearch✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Apache Solr0
Elasticsearch18,551
Github stars
Apache Solr1,685
Elasticsearch78,195
Activity
Commits last 30d
Apache Solr100
Elasticsearch100
Release
Cadence days
Apache Solr–
Elasticsearch1
History
Apache Solr–
Elasticsearch20 items
License
Spdx
Apache SolrApache-2.0
Elasticsearch–
Language
Primary
Apache SolrJava
ElasticsearchJava
Market
Availability
Apache Solr–
Content
Faq
Apache Solr6 items
Elasticsearch7 items

Capabilities

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

Deployment
Deployment
Apache SolrSelf-hosted
ElasticsearchSelf-hosted
Architecture
Index engine
Apache SolrLucene
ElasticsearchLucene
Query
Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL)
Apache SolrHTTP REST API with JSON/XML/CSV
ElasticsearchES|QL
Faceting & filtering
Apache SolrYes
ElasticsearchYes
Geo search
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Relevance
Typo tolerance / fuzzy
Apache Solr-
ElasticsearchBuilt-in
Relevance tuning
Apache Solr-
ElasticsearchLearning-to-rank
Vector
Vector / hybrid search
Apache SolrDense + lexical fusion
ElasticsearchDense + lexical fusion
Scale
Distributed / horizontal scale
Apache SolrClustered
ElasticsearchSharded
Multi-tenancy (indexes / collections / tenants)
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Ingest
Real-time indexing
Apache SolrNear-real-time
ElasticsearchNear-real-time
Workload
Log / analytics workload
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Licensing
Licence class
Apache SolrPermissive OSS
ElasticsearchSource-available (SSPL / Elastic)

What each one is

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

Apache Solr

Apache Solr is a distributed, open-source search engine providing scalable indexing and querying with support for full-text, vector, and geospatial search. It offers features like faceting, analytics, replication, and automated failover, with deployment options including containerization via Docker and Kubernetes.

Independently observed

Elasticsearch

Leader

A search platform that distributes data across multiple nodes to handle large-scale indexing and retrieval through standard web APIs.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Apache Solr

Open source
as of verify ↗

Elasticsearch

Leader
from $99/moSubscription14-day trial

From $99/month. Free 14-day trial available.

  • Standard$99/month
    • Distributed Elasticsearch across AWS, Azure, GCP
    • ES|QL query language and APIs
    • Default monitoring and AutoOps
    • Alerting with detection engine
    • Malware prevention
    • +6 more
  • Gold$114/month
    • All Standard features
    • Reporting
    • Third-party alerting actions
    • Watcher
    • Multi-stack monitoring
    • +3 more
  • Platinum$131/month with SLA
    • All Gold features
    • Machine learning (anomaly detection, supervised learning)
    • Vector search with ELSER and e5 models
    • Cross-cluster replication
    • Log categorization
    • +5 more
  • Enterprise$184/month
    • All Platinum features
    • Searchable snapshots in cold/frozen tiers
    • Elastic Maps Server
    • Cross-cluster search with ES|QL
    • ES|QL Data Federation (query S3 directly)
    • +13 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
Web
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
macOS
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Windows
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Linux
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
CLI
Apache Solr✗
Elasticsearch✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓
Self-hosted
Apache Solr✓
Elasticsearch✓

Integrations

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

In common (1)
  • Kubernetes

Apache Solr

10 total - 9 not shared
  • Apache Lucene
  • Apache Zookeeper
  • Apache Tika
  • Docker
  • Apache ManifoldCF
  • Apache Spark
  • Apache Nutch
  • Apache Zeppelin
  • Apache OpenNLP
Independently observed

Elasticsearch

Leader
43 total - 42 not shared
  • Slack
  • Jira
  • ServiceNow
  • PagerDuty
  • Microsoft Teams
  • IBM Resilient
  • xMatters
  • GitHub
  • Jina AI
  • NVIDIA AI
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Sarvam AI
  • Google ADK
  • LlamaParse
  • Mistral
  • Elastic Agent
  • Beats
  • Logstash
  • Filebeat
  • Metricbeat
  • Heartbeat
  • Webhooks
  • +18 more
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Apache Solr or Elasticsearch: 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.