# Algolia vs Elasticsearch

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Algolia

| Attribute | Algolia | Elasticsearch |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 71.3 (75% (high)) | 60 (50% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 18,551 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 77,862 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"air_gapped":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Algolia is a managed search service that combines keyword search with AI capabilities to help businesses deliver relevant results, personalized discovery, and real-time insights. It powers search, RAG, and agentic experiences across web applications and ecommerce platforms. | 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. |
| features.capabilities | `{"faceting":"yes","deployment":"managed","geo_search":false,"distributed":"clustered","soc2_type_ii":true,"licence_class":"proprietary","log_analytics":false,"multi_tenancy":true,"pricing_model":"tiered_cloud_consumption","vector_search":"hybrid_fusion","typo_tolerance":"built_in","deployment_model":"managed_cloud_saas","relevance_tuning":"ranking_rules","generative_ai_answer_synthesis_rag":true,"bring_your_own_llm_byo_model_support":false,"hipaa_compliance_for_medical_records":true,"source_system_rbac_permissions_mirroring":false,"optical_character_recognition_ocr_for_pdfs":false,"admin_dashboard_for_search_analytics_and_gaps":true,"personalization_based_on_user_department_context":false,"pre_built_native_crawlers_for_100_plus_saas_apps":false}` | `{"faceting":"yes","query_dsl":"ES|QL","deployment":"self_hosted","geo_search":true,"distributed":"sharded","index_engine":"lucene","licence_class":"source_available","log_analytics":true,"multi_tenancy":true,"vector_search":"hybrid_fusion","typo_tolerance":"built_in","relevance_tuning":"ltr","realtime_indexing":"near_real_time"}` |
| integrations.count | 4 | 25 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Shopify"},{"name":"Analytics tools"},{"name":"Data pipelines"},{"name":"Ecommerce platforms"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Stripe"},{"name":"Zendesk"}]` | `[{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Jira"},{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"IBM Resilient"},{"name":"xMatters"},{"name":"GitHub"},{"name":"Jina AI"},{"name":"NVIDIA AI"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"AWS Bedrock"},{"name":"Sarvam AI"},{"name":"Google ADK"},{"name":"LlamaParse"},{"name":"Mistral"},{"name":"Elastic Agent"},{"name":"Beats"},{"name":"Logstash"},{"name":"Filebeat"},{"name":"Metricbeat"},{"name":"Heartbeat"},{"name":"Webhooks"},{"name":"S3"}]` |
| language.primary | - | Java |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US","GB","EU"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"ios":true,"web":true,"android":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Grow","summary":"Free: 10K requests/month, 100K records. Then $0.50 per 1K requests, $0.40 per 1K records.","features":["Keyword Search + Browse","Query suggestions","Manual synonyms","Data transformation","Rules (10/index)","30 days analytics retention","Third party integrations and connectors","US, UK, EU hosting locations"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"search requests"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.5,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"records"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.4,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Free tier with pay-as-you-go overages","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"records":"100K","search_requests":"10K/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Grow Plus","summary":"$1.75 per 1K requests above included amount","features":["Everything in Grow","AI Ranking","Advanced Personalization","Query Categorization","Collections","Rules (10,000/index)","90 days analytics retention"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"search requests"},"kind":"metered","amount":1.75,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Grow features plus AI-powered ranking and personalization","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"search_requests":"10K/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Elevate","summary":"Custom pricing. Contact sales for quote.","features":["Everything in Grow Plus","NeuralSearch","AI Collections","Smart Groups","Real-time personalization","99.99% availability SLA","SSO and Enhanced SLA","Enterprise-level support","Professional services"],"description":"Enterprise-scale AI search with dedicated support","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free tier with 10K requests/month and 100K records. Grow Plus from $1.75 per 1K requests. Elevate for enterprise (custom pricing). Volume discounts available with annual commitment.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.algolia.com/de/pricing/grow-plan","retrievedAt":"2026-08-24T22:38:26.557Z","startingPrice":{"unit":"search requests","amount":1.75,"currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"free|open_source|quote","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free and Open","features":["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","Data ingestion via Logstash, Beats, Elastic Agent","Out-of-the-box threat detection with alerting","APM, logging, metrics collection"],"description":"Full Elasticsearch Stack with core search, analytics, and basic security. Self-hosted or via Elastic Cloud.","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Platinum","features":["Everything in Free plus:","Single sign-on (SSO), LDAP/Active Directory","Field and document-level security","Audit logging","Machine learning anomaly detection","ELSER semantic search models","Cross-cluster replication for high availability","Automated threat discovery","24/7/365 support with 1-hour critical SLA"],"description":"Advanced security, machine learning, and high availability capabilities","contactSales":true},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","features":["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","Elastic Agent Builder for RAG and search development","Jina AI and third-party LLM integration","Semantic reranking and Learn-to-Rank personalization","DiskBBQ vector indexing optimization","Elastic Workflows for automated incident response","Endpoint and cloud workload protection"],"description":"Maximum capabilities including AI orchestration, advanced security, and infrastructure optimization","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free open-source tier; Platinum and Enterprise tiers available on request","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T21:53:02.120Z","freeTrialDays":14}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.starting_price | `{"amount":1.75,"currency":"USD"}` | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.history | - | `[{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.2","date":"2026-08-20T16:44:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.1","date":"2026-08-11T17:58:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.5","date":"2026-08-11T17:57:54Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.20","date":"2026-08-11T18:24:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.20"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2026-08-04T11:46:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.4","date":"2026-07-21T12:56:20Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.8","date":"2026-07-21T12:56:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.19","date":"2026-07-21T13:28:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.18","date":"2026-06-30T16:43:41Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.18"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.7","date":"2026-06-30T16:47:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.3","date":"2026-06-30T14:30:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.17","date":"2026-06-23T13:59:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.6","date":"2026-06-23T14:09:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.2","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.5","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.16","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.1","date":"2026-05-12T18:02:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2026-05-05T15:15:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.15","date":"2026-04-30T15:24:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.4","date":"2026-04-30T15:24:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.4"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 6.9 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.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"}` |

## Capabilities (Search Engines)

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

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:09:04.001Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*