10 Open Source Alternatives to ElasticSearch

A list of 10 carefully selected open-source alternatives to ElasticSearch.

Adrian
Created by
Adrian
Mar 9, 202510 min read

The open-source alternatives are ranked based on our custom ranking system and score. This system takes into account various factors to determine the best alternatives.

If you’re looking for alternative features or workflows, here is a prepared detailed list of ElasticSearch open-source alternatives — each with its own distinctive strengths and key features.

#1
Meilisearch logo

Meilisearch

49,686
1,948

Meilisearch is a lightning-fast search engine API designed to deliver exceptional search experiences with minimal setup. It combines cutting-edge AI-powered hybrid search capabilities with a user-friendly interface, making it ideal for websites and applications.

Meilisearch screenshot

Key Features

  • Lightning-fast search responses (<50ms)
  • Plug-n-play setup with zero configuration
  • Hybrid search combining full-text and semantic capabilities
  • Multi-modal search support including images, videos, and audio
  • Advanced filtering, faceting, and sorting options
  • Robust search analytics and geosearch functionality
  • Extensive SDK support for multiple programming languages

Meilisearch powers search-as-you-type with response times under 50 milliseconds, ensuring users find answers instantly. The engine offers plug-n-play deployment with smart presets and robust support for full-text, semantic, and hybrid searches. It also provides advanced capabilities like multi-modal search, filtering, faceting, and geosearch, along with comprehensive SDKs and detailed analytics, making integration seamless for developers.

#2
Milvus logo

Milvus

33,065
3,069

Milvus is a high-performance, open-source vector database designed for GenAI applications and scalable similarity search. It offers versatile deployment options—from lightweight local setups to enterprise-grade distributed clusters—ensuring minimal performance loss even when handling tens of billions of vectors.

Milvus screenshot

Key Features

  • High-performance vector search tailored for GenAI applications
  • Scalable architecture handling billions of vectors efficiently
  • Multiple deployment options: Lite, Standalone, Distributed, and fully managed cloud
  • Simple integration via pip and Python client for quick setup
  • Seamless integration with leading AI development tools

Milvus empowers developers with advanced Approximate Nearest Neighbor search capabilities and seamless integration with popular AI tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI, and Hugging Face. Its flexible deployment models, including Milvus Lite for prototyping, Milvus Standalone for production testing, and a distributed architecture for large-scale operations, streamline the process of data ingestion, search, and management with a simple pip installation and Python client support.

#3
Qdrant logo

Qdrant

22,368
1,532

Qdrant is a high-performance, massive-scale vector database and vector search engine designed for modern AI applications. It combines robust vector similarity search with cloud-native scalability, ensuring efficient handling of high-dimensional data.

Qdrant screenshot

Key Features

  • High-performance vector search and similarity matching
  • Scalable, cloud-native architecture with zero-downtime upgrades
  • Efficient storage with built-in compression and offloading options
  • Seamless integration through Docker and a lightweight API
  • Rust-powered reliability for handling billions of vectors
  • Multiple deployment options including managed, hybrid, and private clouds

Qdrant powers AI-driven applications with an open-source vector database built in Rust, offering exceptional performance for processing billions of vectors. Its advanced similarity search capabilities support recommendations, retrieval augmented generation, and anomaly detection. With simple Docker deployment and a lean API, Qdrant ensures ease of integration, scalability with horizontal and vertical scaling, and effortless management on managed, hybrid, or private cloud setups.

#4
Orama logo

Orama

9,142
326

Orama is a lightweight search engine and RAG pipeline that runs seamlessly in the browser, server, or edge network, offering full-text, vector, and hybrid search in under 2KB. This tool enhances user interactions by integrating chat capabilities with advanced quality controls to ensure accurate and engaging responses.

Orama screenshot

Key Features

  • Lightweight search engine and RAG pipeline under 2KB
  • Supports full-text, vector, and hybrid search with sub-100ms latency
  • Automated NLP-based chunking and embedding generation
  • Integrated chat functionality for enhanced user engagement
  • Robust quality checks to prevent misleading responses
  • Powerful analytics and user segmentation for informed decision-making
  • Unlimited search query sessions across all plans

Orama transforms search experiences by seamlessly combining full-text, vector, and hybrid search methods, delivering results with an average latency of under 100ms worldwide. It automates NLP-based chunking and embedding generation with no additional configuration, while integrating smart chat features to drive user engagement and conversion. With robust quality checks that prevent hallucinations, Orama also provides insightful analytics and user segmentation to empower data-driven decisions.

#5
Logstash logo

Logstash

14,374
3,516

Logstash is an open source server-side data processing pipeline that centralizes, transforms, and routes logs, events, and other data. It efficiently ingests information from various sources and applies transformation rules to output data to your preferred storage or analytical tool.

Logstash screenshot

Key Features

  • Dynamic ingestion from diverse data sources
  • Extensive filtering and transformation capabilities with over 200 plugins
  • Persistent queue for reliable, at-least-once delivery
  • Centralized pipeline management with a user-friendly UI
  • Robust security and scalability during high-throughput events

Logstash ingests data from a multitude of sources such as logs, metrics, web applications, and data stores in a continuous, streaming fashion. With a rich library of filters—including grok for parsing and IP-to-geo transformations—it cleans, structures, and tailors your data for analysis. The pipeline’s durability is ensured by its persistent queue and at-least-once delivery, while centralized management and monitoring features provide full deployment visibility.

#6
Quickwit logo

Quickwit

9,766
435

Quickwit is an open-source, cloud-native search engine built for observability. It leverages a highly optimized file format, smart I/O scheduling, and Rust-based performance to deliver sub-second query speeds on vast amounts of cloud storage data.

Quickwit screenshot

Key Features

  • Cloud-native search with decoupled compute and storage
  • Optimized file format reducing I/O requests
  • Smart I/O scheduling for maximum throughput
  • Rust-based implementation with no garbage collector
  • Enterprise-ready scalability and multi-tenancy
  • Seamless integration with object storage and distributed queues
  • Native support for OpenTelemetry and Jaeger

Designed for logs and traces, Quickwit executes queries directly on cost-efficient object storage while ensuring scalability and high availability. Its architecture decouples compute from storage, uses the high-performance Tantivy library, and supports enterprise features such as multi-tenancy and retention policies. Quickwit is easy to deploy on-premise, in the cloud, or via Kubernetes, fitting seamlessly into existing environments with REST APIs and native integrations with popular distributed queues.

#7
Typesense logo

Typesense

22,289
698

Typesense is a modern, blazing-fast open source search engine built for creating delightful search experiences without complexity. It offers an intuitive developer experience that enables rapid deployment, making it a strong alternative to traditional search solutions like Algolia, Pinecone, and ElasticSearch.

Typesense screenshot

Key Features

  • Blazing-fast, sub-50ms search performance
  • Typo tolerance and in-memory fuzzy search
  • Comprehensive features: autocomplete, faceted navigation, geo-search, vector and semantic search
  • Intuitive RESTful API with multi-language support
  • Easy high availability and scalable deployment

Typesense delivers sub-50ms search results using in-memory, typo-tolerant algorithms and advanced features such as search-as-you-type, autocomplete, faceted navigation, geo-search, vector, and semantic search. Designed with a developer-friendly RESTful API and multi-language client libraries, it enables effortless integration and scalability, letting teams quickly build resilient, high-performance search applications.

#8
Sonic logo

Sonic

20,567
595

Sonic is a fast, lightweight, and schema-less search backend designed to handle text indexing and querying with minimal resource consumption. It serves as an efficient alternative to feature-heavy search engines like Elasticsearch, ideal for applications that require rapid search responses and low overhead.

Sonic screenshot

Key Features

  • Microsecond query responses with minimal resource usage
  • Schema-less indexing for flexible data management
  • Real-time auto-completion and typo correction
  • Full Unicode support across 80+ languages
  • Lightweight, using only a few dozen MBs of RAM under load
  • Multiple installation methods including Docker, Cargo, and pre-built packages
  • Simple TCP-based Sonic Channel protocol for easy integration

Sonic ingests search texts and identifier tuples, delivering query results in microseconds while maintaining a small memory footprint. Built for high performance and ease of use, it normalizes natural language queries, offers real-time auto-completion, and corrects typos. Its simple TCP-based Sonic Channel protocol ensures streamlined data ingestion and search operations, making it especially suitable for projects seeking efficient search backend solutions without the complexity of traditional systems.

Manticore Search is an open source, high-performance search database designed to offer fast full-text and vector search capabilities. It serves as a reliable alternative to Elasticsearch with native SQL and JSON interfaces, enabling seamless integration and ease of use for developers and DevOps.

Manticoresearch screenshot

Key Features

  • Fast full-text and vector search capabilities
  • SQL and JSON API support for flexible querying
  • Multi-model storage (row-wise and columnar)
  • Efficient performance with low resource consumption
  • Seamless integration as a drop-in Elasticsearch alternative
  • Real-time indexing and scalability for various use cases
  • Active open source community and support

Manticore Search leverages C++ for optimized performance and low resource consumption, ensuring rapid responses even on large datasets and high-volume log analytics. Its multi-model architecture supports both row-wise and columnar storage, and the tool provides flexible real-time indexing, making it ideal for diverse search applications from small sites to enterprise-scale data operations.

#10
Matano logo

Matano

1,518
109

Matano is an open source security data lake and modern cloud native SIEM designed for threat hunting, detection and response. It empowers security teams with petabyte-scale analytics on AWS, enabling rapid threat detection and comprehensive cybersecurity analytics.

Matano screenshot

Key Features

  • Ingests and stores security data at petabyte scale on AWS
  • Automatically integrates with 1000+ data sources using prebuilt parsers
  • Offers 800+ detection rules for real-time threat identification
  • Provides Splunk-compatible search language for efficient data querying
  • Delivers contextualized alerts with integrated threat intelligence

Matano centralizes all security logs into a scalable data lake that ingests data from over 1000 sources with prebuilt parsers. With 800+ out-of-the-box detection rules and a Splunk-compatible search language, it facilitates rapid threat hunting and real-time alerting. Its integration with diverse data platforms ensures enriched context and a unified view for advanced cybersecurity analytics.

Price comparison of ElasticSearch open-source alternatives

ToolTier 1Tier 2Tier 3Details
Qdrant logo
Qdrant
$0
Managed Cloud
$0.014
Hybrid Cloud
-
Private Cloud
Learn more

* Pricing shown is based on publicly available information and may not reflect current rates. Visit each tool's website for detailed pricing information and additional tiers.

About ElasticSearch

Elasticsearch is a brand that offers powerful insights and outcomes through their Elasticsearch Platform and AI. Whether you need to analyze data or find answers that matter, their enterprise solutions are designed to help you build, observe, and protect. With the Elasticsearch Platform, you can access real-time answers at scale, enabling you to search and analyze data quickly and effectively. Their observability solutions provide app and infrastructure visibility, allowing you to proactively resolve issues. Additionally, their security solutions help you protect, investigate, and respond to cyber threats efficiently. Lastly, their search solutions accelerate search results across any cloud, making it easier to find what you're looking for. Trusted by 50% of the Fortune 500, Elasticsearch is the go-to choice for organizations looking to drive innovation and achieve optimal results. Try Elasticsearch for free today and experience the power of AI-driven insights.
This comparison data was compiled with AI assistance.
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