# OpenSearch vs Vespa

| Attribute | OpenSearch | Vespa |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 54.3 (47% (low)) | 58 (75% (high)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 223 | 7 |
| adoption.github_stars | 13,873 | 7,129 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An open-source search and observability suite that enables enterprises to search, analyze, and monitor unstructured data. It combines full-text search, machine learning, real-time log analysis, and security analytics capabilities in an integrated platform. It is indexed under Search Engines.","source":"https://opensearch.org","question":"What is OpenSearch?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenSearch is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://opensearch.org","question":"Is OpenSearch free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenSearch supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://opensearch.org","question":"What platforms does OpenSearch support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. OpenSearch can be deployed on-premise and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://opensearch.org","question":"Can OpenSearch be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. OpenSearch is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch","question":"Is OpenSearch open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"A distributed serving engine that unifies retrieval, ranking, machine learning inference, and real-time serving for business-critical AI applications. It is indexed under Search Engines.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"What is Vespa?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Vespa offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"Is Vespa free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Vespa supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"What platforms does Vespa support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Vespa can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"Can Vespa be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 12 integrations for Vespa, including Python, Cohere, TwelveLabs, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini, Cursor and VSCode, plus 4 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"What does Vespa integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 and GDPR for Vespa. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Vespa not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://trust.vespa.ai","question":"What security certifications does Vespa have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Vespa is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa","question":"Is Vespa open source?","confidence":0.95},{"answer":"Vespa is available worldwide. The vendor is headquartered in Norway.","source":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","question":"Where is Vespa available?","confidence":0.75}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | An Apache 2.0-licensed, vendor-neutral search and analytics platform that enables indexing, searching, visualization, and analysis of data across applications and infrastructure. | 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. |
| features.capabilities | `{"query_dsl":"SQL, PPL","deployment":"self_hosted","geo_search":false,"distributed":"sharded","licence_class":"source_available","log_analytics":true,"multi_tenancy":true,"vector_search":"hybrid_fusion","relevance_tuning":"bm25_only","realtime_indexing":"near_real_time"}` | `{"deployment":"self_hosted","distributed":"sharded","index_engine":"custom","licence_class":"permissive_oss","vector_search":"hybrid_fusion","typo_tolerance":"configurable","deployment_model":"hybrid","relevance_tuning":"ranking_rules","realtime_indexing":"near_real_time","generative_ai_answer_synthesis_rag":true,"multi_lingual_semantic_understanding":true,"hybrid_dense_and_sparse_lexical_reranking":true}` |
| integrations.count | 1 | 12 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Data Prepper"}]` | `[{"name":"Python"},{"name":"Cohere"},{"name":"TwelveLabs"},{"name":"Claude Code"},{"name":"OpenAI Codex"},{"name":"Google Gemini"},{"name":"Cursor"},{"name":"VSCode"},{"name":"IntelliJ"},{"name":"PyCharm"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"GCP"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | Java |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"NO","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://opensearch.org","retrievedAt":"2026-10-15T20:26:16.076Z"}` | `{"type":"free","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://vespa.ai","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T11:26:49.809Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | free |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 29 | 3 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.9.0","date":"2026-09-29T21:54:18Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.8.0","date":"2026-08-05T17:20:33Z","type":"stable","version":"3.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.6","date":"2026-07-06T18:22:45Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.7.0","date":"2026-06-09T23:41:20Z","type":"stable","version":"3.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.6.0","date":"2026-04-07T22:06:23Z","type":"stable","version":"3.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.5","date":"2026-05-13T17:52:18Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.5.0","date":"2026-02-12T15:40:44Z","type":"stable","version":"3.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.4.0","date":"2025-12-17T07:57:13Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.4","date":"2025-11-06T21:45:44Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.3.2","date":"2025-10-30T20:34:44Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.3.1","date":"2025-10-22T18:32:00Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.3.0","date":"2025-10-14T21:22:10Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.2.0","date":"2025-08-19T23:45:42Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.3","date":"2025-08-21T21:09:15Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.1.0","date":"2025-06-24T22:18:26Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.0.0","date":"2025-05-06T21:58:50Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.0.0-beta1","date":"2025-04-23T00:16:18Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.0-beta1"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.2","date":"2025-08-21T21:11:35Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/3.0.0-alpha1","date":"2025-03-18T22:31:54Z","type":"stable","version":"3.0.0-alpha1"},{"url":"https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/2.19.1","date":"2025-02-27T23:31:01Z","type":"stable","version":"2.19.1"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/lsp-v2.6.1","date":"2026-10-06T14:56:06Z","type":"stable","version":"lsp-v2.6.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.763.13","date":"2026-10-05T02:26:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.763.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.753.16","date":"2026-09-16T23:24:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.753.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/lsp-v2.6.0","date":"2026-09-16T09:27:29Z","type":"stable","version":"lsp-v2.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.751.13","date":"2026-09-07T02:23:38Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.751.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.750.13","date":"2026-09-03T05:43:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.750.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.748.3","date":"2026-09-01T07:14:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.748.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.746.22","date":"2026-09-01T07:14:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.746.22"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/lsp-v2.5.0","date":"2026-08-24T08:45:45Z","type":"stable","version":"lsp-v2.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.738.17","date":"2026-08-13T04:51:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.738.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.736.12","date":"2026-08-10T02:24:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.736.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.733.3","date":"2026-08-05T09:03:54Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.733.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.730.36","date":"2026-07-28T04:47:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.730.36"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.719.5","date":"2026-07-07T02:30:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.719.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.709.19","date":"2026-06-18T18:42:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.709.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.708.30","date":"2026-06-18T04:26:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.708.30"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.707.16","date":"2026-06-16T14:15:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.707.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.703.17","date":"2026-06-09T16:31:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.703.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.702.91","date":"2026-06-09T02:20:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.702.91"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/lsp-v2.4.10","date":"2026-06-08T04:18:37Z","type":"stable","version":"lsp-v2.4.10"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | - | 5.9 |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.opensearch.client%3Aopensearch-rest-high-level-client&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"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,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Search Engines)

| Capability | OpenSearch | Vespa |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Index engine | - | Custom |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Query DSL (JSON / SQL / params / GraphQL) | SQL, PPL | - |
| Faceting & filtering | - | - |
| Geo search | ✗ | - |
| **Relevance** |  |  |
| Typo tolerance / fuzzy | - | Configurable |
| Relevance tuning | BM25 only | 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 |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T16:01:42.904Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*