# OpenSearch vs Vespa

| Attribute | OpenSearch | Vespa |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 60.6 (50% (medium)) | 56.1 (77% (high)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 85 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 223 | 7 |
| adoption.github_stars | 13,581 | 7,069 |
| deployment.options | `{"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | A distributed serving engine that unifies retrieval, ranking, machine learning inference, and real-time serving for business-critical AI applications. |
| features.capabilities | `{"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 | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source and free to use","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://opensearch.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T16:38:44.075Z"}` | `{"type":"subscription","summary":"Free trial available; contact sales for paid plan pricing","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://vespa.ai/pricing/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T12:45:29.228Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 29 | 3 |
| release.history | `[{"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/opensearch-project/OpenSearch/releases/tag/1.3.20","date":"2024-12-11T23:23:59Z","type":"stable","version":"1.3.20"}]` | `[{"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"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.700.24","date":"2026-06-04T11:28:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.700.24"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.699.8","date":"2026-06-03T02:24:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.699.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.696.20","date":"2026-05-28T17:58:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.696.20"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.695.32","date":"2026-05-28T02:25:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.695.32"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.694.53","date":"2026-05-27T02:20:47Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.694.53"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.692.16","date":"2026-05-21T08:17:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.692.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.691.19","date":"2026-05-19T18:07:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.691.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/tag/v8.687.75","date":"2026-05-12T02:27:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.687.75"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | - | 5.8 |
| 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) | - | - |
| 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: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:14:00.045Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*