Comparison

Elasticsearch vs Vespa

No clear leader: Elasticsearch (60.0) and Vespa (56.1) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Elasticsearch full profile →Vespa full profile →

Machine formatsJSON Markdown GraphQLor send Accept: application/json

Elasticsearch60

Vespa56

Attribute comparison across 2 tools
Attribute	Elasticsearch	Vespa
Vioscale score	60 / 100medium · 50%	56 / 100high · 77%
Pricing
Free tierpricing.free_tier	✓	✓
Modelpricing.model	commercial	freemium
Price levelpricing.price_level	low	low
Transparentpricing.transparent	✗	✗
Integrations
Countintegrations.count	25	12
Security
Disclosure policysecurity.disclosure_policy	-	✓
Gdprsecurity.gdpr	-	✓
Scorecardsecurity.scorecard	6.9	5.8
Soc2security.soc2	-	✓
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=maven&package_name=com.yahoo.vespa%3Acontainer-test&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0
Reliability
Status pagereliability.status_page	✓	✓
Adoption
Dependent reposadoption.dependent_repos	18,551	7
Github starsadoption.github_stars	77,862	7,069
Activity
Commits last 30dactivity.commits_last_30d	100	100
Release
Cadence daysrelease.cadence_days	-	3
Historyrelease.history	20 items	20 items
License
Spdxlicense.spdx	-	Apache-2.0
Language
Primarylanguage.primary	Java	Java
Market
Availabilitymarket.availability	Available worldwide · Popular in US	Available worldwide · HQ NO

Score

Vioscale score

Elasticsearch60 / 100medium · 50%

Vespa56 / 100high · 77%

Pricing

Free tier

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

Model

Elasticsearchcommercial

Vespafreemium

Price level

Elasticsearchlow

Vespalow

Transparent

Elasticsearch✗

Vespa✗

Integrations

Count

Elasticsearch25

Vespa12

Security

Disclosure policy

Elasticsearch–

Vespa✓

Gdpr

Elasticsearch–

Vespa✓

Scorecard

Elasticsearch6.9

Vespa5.8

Soc2

Elasticsearch–

Vespa✓

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

VespaCount: 0 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=com.yahoo.vespa%3Acontainer-test&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0

Reliability

Status page

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

Adoption

Dependent repos

Elasticsearch18,551

Vespa7

Github stars

Elasticsearch77,862

Vespa7,069

Activity

Commits last 30d

Elasticsearch100

Vespa100

Release

Cadence days

Elasticsearch–

Vespa3

History

Elasticsearch20 items

Vespa20 items

License

Spdx

Elasticsearch–

VespaApache-2.0

Language

Primary

ElasticsearchJava

VespaJava

Market

Availability

ElasticsearchAvailable worldwide · Popular in US

VespaAvailable worldwide · HQ NO

Capabilities

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

Capability comparison for Search Engines
Capability	Elasticsearch	Vespa
Deployment
Deployment	Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Architecture
Index engine	Lucene	Custom
Query
Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL)	ES\|QL	-
Faceting & filtering	Yes	-
Geo search	✓	-
Relevance
Typo tolerance / fuzzy	Built-in	Configurable
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	Near-real-time
Workload
Log / analytics workload	✓	-
Licensing
Licence class	Source-available (SSPL / Elastic)	Permissive OSS

Deployment

ElasticsearchSelf-hosted

VespaSelf-hosted

Architecture

Index engine

ElasticsearchLucene

VespaCustom

Query

Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL)

ElasticsearchES|QL

Vespa-

Faceting & filtering

ElasticsearchYes

Vespa-

Geo search

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa-

Relevance

Typo tolerance / fuzzy

ElasticsearchBuilt-in

VespaConfigurable

Relevance tuning

ElasticsearchLearning-to-rank

VespaRanking rules

Vector

Vector / hybrid search

ElasticsearchDense + lexical fusion

VespaDense + lexical fusion

Scale

Distributed / horizontal scale

ElasticsearchSharded

VespaSharded

Multi-tenancy (indexes / collections / tenants)

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa-

Ingest

Real-time indexing

ElasticsearchNear-real-time

VespaNear-real-time

Workload

Log / analytics workload

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa-

Licensing

Licence class

ElasticsearchSource-available (SSPL / Elastic)

VespaPermissive OSS

What each one is

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

Elasticsearch

A search and analytics platform that ingests, stores, and searches structured, unstructured, and vector data in real time. Supports full-text search, vector search, observability analytics, and security event analysis through a unified REST API and query language.

Independently observed

Vespa

A distributed serving engine that unifies retrieval, ranking, machine learning inference, and real-time serving for business-critical AI applications.

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

free|open_source|quoteFree tier14-day trial

Free open-source tier; Platinum and Enterprise tiers available on request

Free and OpenFree
- Distributed vector and search engine
- Full-text, semantic, and vector search
- Kibana interface for querying and visualization
- Native authentication and TLS encryption
- Basic monitoring via Stack Monitoring
- +3 more
PlatinumContact sales
- Everything in Free plus:
- Single sign-on (SSO), LDAP/Active Directory
- Field and document-level security
- Audit logging
- Machine learning anomaly detection
- +4 more
EnterpriseContact sales
- Everything in Platinum plus:
- Searchable snapshots on low-cost object storage (up to 80% cost reduction)
- Attack Discovery (GenAI security)
- Universal Profiling for application performance
- Cross-cluster search with advanced API-key security
- +6 more

as of 2026-08-14verify ↗

Vespa

SubscriptionFree tier

Free trial available; contact sales for paid plan pricing

as of 2026-08-21verify ↗

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	Vespa
WebPlatforms	✓	✓
CLIPlatforms	✓	✓
Cloud / SaaSDeployment	✓	✓
Self-hostedDeployment	✓	✓
On-premiseDeployment	✓	✗
HybridDeployment	✗	✓
Air-gappedDeployment	✓	✗

Platforms

Web

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

CLI

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

Deployment

Cloud / SaaS

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

Self-hosted

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✓

On-premise

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✗

Hybrid

Elasticsearch✗

Vespa✓

Air-gapped

Elasticsearch✓

Vespa✗

Integrations

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

Elasticsearch

25 total

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
+1 more

Independently observed

Vespa

12 total

Python
Cohere
TwelveLabs
Claude Code
OpenAI Codex
Google Gemini
Cursor
VSCode
IntelliJ
PyCharm
AWS
GCP

Independently observed

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