Comparison

Elasticsearch vs Meilisearch

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.

Elasticsearch full profile →Meilisearch full profile →

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.

★Elasticsearch73

Meilisearch65

Attribute comparison across 2 tools
Attribute	ElasticsearchLeader	Meilisearch
vioscaleAI score	73 / 100medium · 58%	65 / 100medium · 67%
Pricing
Free tierpricing.free_tier	✗	✓
Modelpricing.model	commercial	freemium
Price levelpricing.price_level	high	mid
Starting pricepricing.starting_price	$99	$20
Transparentpricing.transparent	✓	✓
Integrations
Countintegrations.count	350	23
Security
Certificationssecurity.certifications	-	SOC 2 Type II
Disclosure policysecurity.disclosure_policy	-	✓
Gdprsecurity.gdpr	✓	✓
Scorecardsecurity.scorecard	6.4	-
Soc2security.soc2	-	✓
Trust centersecurity.trust_center	https://www.elastic.co/legal/trade-compliance	https://www.meilisearch.com/blog/soc2-typeii-compliance
Vulnerabilitiessecurity.vulnerabilities	Count: 45 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.elasticsearch%3Aelasticsearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 2 · Max severity: HIGH	Count: 0 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=homebrew&package_name=meilisearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0
Reliability
Sla pctreliability.sla_pct	99.95	99.999
Status pagereliability.status_page	✓	✓
Adoption
Dependent reposadoption.dependent_repos	18,551	17
Github starsadoption.github_stars	78,195	59,573
Activity
Commits last 30dactivity.commits_last_30d	100	100
Release
Cadence daysrelease.cadence_days	1	4
Historyrelease.history	20 items	20 items
Language
Primarylanguage.primary	Java	Rust
Market
Availabilitymarket.availability	Available worldwide · Popular in US	Available worldwide
Content
Faqcontent.faq	7 items	6 items

Score

vioscaleAI score

Elasticsearch73 / 100medium · 58%

Meilisearch65 / 100medium · 67%

Pricing

Free tier

Elasticsearch✗

Meilisearch✓

Model

Elasticsearchcommercial

Meilisearchfreemium

Price level

Elasticsearchhigh

Meilisearchmid

Starting price

Elasticsearch$99

Meilisearch$20

Transparent

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Integrations

Count

Elasticsearch350

Meilisearch23

Security

Certifications

Elasticsearch–

MeilisearchSOC 2 Type II

Disclosure policy

Elasticsearch–

Meilisearch✓

Gdpr

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Scorecard

Elasticsearch6.4

Meilisearch–

Soc2

Elasticsearch–

Meilisearch✓

Trust center

Elasticsearchhttps://www.elastic.co/legal/trade-compliance

Meilisearchhttps://www.meilisearch.com/blog/soc2-typeii-compliance

Vulnerabilities

ElasticsearchCount: 45 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.elasticsearch%3Aelasticsearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 2 · Max severity: HIGH

MeilisearchCount: 0 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=homebrew&package_name=meilisearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0

Reliability

Sla pct

Elasticsearch99.95

Meilisearch99.999

Status page

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Adoption

Dependent repos

Elasticsearch18,551

Meilisearch17

Github stars

Elasticsearch78,195

Meilisearch59,573

Activity

Commits last 30d

Elasticsearch100

Meilisearch100

Release

Cadence days

Elasticsearch1

Meilisearch4

History

Elasticsearch20 items

Meilisearch20 items

Language

Primary

ElasticsearchJava

MeilisearchRust

Market

Availability

ElasticsearchAvailable worldwide · Popular in US

MeilisearchAvailable worldwide

Content

Faq

Elasticsearch7 items

Meilisearch6 items

Capabilities

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

Capability comparison for Search Engines
Capability	Elasticsearch	Meilisearch
Deployment
Deployment	Self-hosted	Managed
Architecture
Index engine	Lucene	-
Query
Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL)	ES\|QL	JSON (HTTP API)
Faceting & filtering	Yes	Yes
Geo search	✓	✓
Relevance
Typo tolerance / fuzzy	Built-in	Built-in
Relevance tuning	Learning-to-rank	Ranking rules
Vector
Vector / hybrid search	Dense + lexical fusion	Dense + lexical fusion
Scale
Distributed / horizontal scale	Sharded	Sharded
Multi-tenancy (indexes / collections / tenants)	✓	✓
Ingest
Real-time indexing	Near-real-time	-
Workload
Log / analytics workload	✓	✓
Licensing
Licence class	Source-available (SSPL / Elastic)	Permissive OSS

Deployment

ElasticsearchSelf-hosted

MeilisearchManaged

Architecture

Index engine

ElasticsearchLucene

Meilisearch-

Query

Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL)

ElasticsearchES|QL

MeilisearchJSON (HTTP API)

Faceting & filtering

ElasticsearchYes

MeilisearchYes

Geo search

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Relevance

Typo tolerance / fuzzy

ElasticsearchBuilt-in

MeilisearchBuilt-in

Relevance tuning

ElasticsearchLearning-to-rank

MeilisearchRanking rules

Vector

Vector / hybrid search

ElasticsearchDense + lexical fusion

MeilisearchDense + lexical fusion

Scale

Distributed / horizontal scale

ElasticsearchSharded

MeilisearchSharded

Multi-tenancy (indexes / collections / tenants)

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Ingest

Real-time indexing

ElasticsearchNear-real-time

Meilisearch-

Workload

Log / analytics workload

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Licensing

Licence class

ElasticsearchSource-available (SSPL / Elastic)

MeilisearchPermissive OSS

What each one is

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

Elasticsearch

Leader

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

Independently observed

Meilisearch

A cloud-hosted and self-hosted search engine that combines full-text and semantic search. It's designed for rapid integration with zero configuration required and includes features like faceting, geosearch, and vector storage.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

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 2026-09-07verify ↗

Meilisearch

from $20/moHybridFree tier14-day trial

From $20/month with 14-day free trial. Free self-hosted option. Custom enterprise pricing available.

CloudFrom $20/month with usage or resource-based pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Email support
- Fully managed infrastructure
- Usage-based or resource-based billing
- Automatic scaling
- +1 more
Self-HostedFree
- Full infrastructure control
- No usage limits
- MIT license
EnterpriseContact sales
- Custom infrastructure
- Dedicated resources
- Up to 99.999% SLA
- Dedicated Slack support channel
- SSO SAML
- +7 more

as of 2026-10-15verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platform and deployment support comparison
Supports	Elasticsearch	Meilisearch
WebPlatforms	✓	✓
macOSPlatforms	✓	✗
WindowsPlatforms	✓	✗
LinuxPlatforms	✓	✗
CLIPlatforms	✓	✓
Cloud / SaaSDeployment	✓	✓
Self-hostedDeployment	✓	✓
HybridDeployment	✗	✓

Platforms

Web

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

macOS

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✗

Windows

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✗

Linux

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✗

CLI

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Deployment

Cloud / SaaS

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Self-hosted

Elasticsearch✓

Meilisearch✓

Hybrid

Elasticsearch✗

Meilisearch✓

Integrations

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

In common (1)

Kubernetes

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

Meilisearch

36 total - 35 not shared

JavaScript
TypeScript
Python
PHP
Ruby
Go
Rust
Java
.NET
Swift
Dart
Laravel
Rails
Symfony
Strapi
Firebase
React
Vue
Angular
Docker
meilisync
MCP
JavaScript SDK
Python SDK
+11 more

Independently observed

Still deciding?

Elasticsearch or Meilisearch: 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.