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Algolia vs Elastic Search vs Solr comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Algolia is 9.4%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 17.9%, up from 14.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 4.9%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search17.9%
Algolia9.4%
Solr4.9%
Other67.80000000000001%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Kozykorpesh Tolep - PeerSpot reviewer
software engineer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real-time search has improved device monitoring and now needs better relevance tuning and cost clarity
One area for Algolia's improvement is the relevance of tuning and configuration because it can take some time to properly configure ranking and filtering for a specific use case. If you are new to this or do not have experience with the tuning and configuration of the search, that can take some time to adapt and use this search engine. To make it better, I would appreciate improvement in the relevance of tuning and configuration, as it takes time to properly configure ranking and filtering. I can also say that transparency for scaling usage and cost transparency for when you are scaling would be beneficial.
Anurag Pal - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Search and aggregations have transformed how I manage and visualize complex real estate data
Elastic Search consumes lots of memory. You have to provide the heap size a lot if you want the best out of it. The major problem is when a company wants to use Elastic Search but it is at a startup stage. At a startup stage, there is a lot of funds to consider. However, their use case is that they have to use a pretty significant amount of data. For that, it is very expensive. For example, if you take OLTP-based databases in the current scenario, such as ClickHouse or Iceberg, you can do it on 4GB RAM also. Elastic Search is for analytical records. You have to do the analytics on it. According to me, as far as I have seen, people will start moving from Elastic Search sooner or later. Why? Because it is expensive. Another thing is that there is an open source available for that, such as ClickHouse. Around 2014 and 2012, there was only one competitor at that time, which was Solr. But now, not only is Solr there, but you can take ClickHouse and you have Iceberg also. How are we going to compete with them? There is also a fork of Elastic Search that is OpenSearch. As far as I have seen in lots of articles I am reading, users are using it as the ELK stack for logs and analyzing logs. That is not the exact use case. It can do more than that if used correctly. But as it involves lots of cost, people are shifting from Elastic Search to other sources. When I am talking about pricing, it is not only the server pricing. It is the amount of memory it is using. The pricing is basically the heap Java, which is taking memory. That is the major problem happening here. If we have to run an MVP, a client comes to me and says, "Anurag, we need to do a proof of concept. Can we do it if I can pay a 4GB or 16GB expense?" How can I suggest to them that a minimum of 16GB is needed for Elastic Search so that your proof of concept will be proved? In that case, what I have to suggest from the beginning is to go with Cassandra or at the initial stage, go with PostgreSQL. The problem is the memory it is taking. That is the only thing.
it_user823641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Search Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
The Natural Language Search capability is helpful and intuitive for our users
The initial setup is complex because this is a distributed system, and you have to make sure that every individual node is aware of every other node in existence. This search engine has a large capacity, so you need to make sure that there is enough buffer space. We took one month to deploy and perform a fresh setup. Our strategy was to start with a local data center, before venturing into cross data center replicas. A staff size of two to four people is suitable for deploying and maintaining the solution, depending upon the scale. They would set up the solution and put monitoring in place for the indexing jobs, as well as design the schema so that the data can feed well.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We were working with search products, brands, and different attributes specific to the product; it's faster and easier. The implementation is easy."
"Algolia has impacted my organization positively in a good way, as it has shaped the product and it feels as though the product has a premium search engine behind it."
"It's scalable. It can be scaled massively."
"The Algolia solution really helped us to improve our conversion rate and click through rate."
"Algolia provides extremely fast search performance, which is particularly useful for projects with big data and many data points."
"Algolia provides some cool functionalities like filtering, indexing, and searching."
"Algolia has positively impacted our organization by allowing us a faster time to market."
"The tool is easy to use, but you need to know how it works."
"We are developing a SIEM application that is similar to QRadar, ArcSight, or Splunk, and this application uses Elasticsearch as its search engine because we want to retrieve information fast."
"Big businesses cannot survive without Elastic Search because it gives us very good visibility and handles our use cases very well."
"You have dashboards, it is visual, there are maps, you can create canvases. It's more visual than anything that I've ever used."
"We have many advantages from the features of Elasticsearch, and we have enough possibilities and features with Elasticsearch for our business requirements."
"I would recommend Elastic Search to other people who want to have fast search in their applications."
"I think that Elasticsearch is a good product and cheaper than Splunk."
"In the last 18 months Elastic has really caught up and also gone way beyond AWS by putting together all the missing components that make ELK Elasticsearch the most comprehensive stack in the entire Big Data ecosystem."
"My favorite feature is the ease of use, particularly in how you integrate the agent; I've been using it since version 7, and we're on version 9 now, and I've seen the progress from using Beats to using the agent, making it so simple today to enroll a server with the Elastic Agent."
"We use Solr to index over 600k documents; it's very fast, flexible to use, and the speed of indexing individual documents has been great."
"This is an infinitely scalable product with state-of-the-art technology, and the value of Natural Language Search is tremendous."
"One of the best aspects of the solution is the indexing; it's already indexed to all the fields in the category, so we don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing, which is great."
"One of the best aspects of the solution is the indexing. It's already indexed to all the fields in the category. We don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing. It's great."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
"​Sharding data, Faceting, Hit Highlighting, parent-child Block Join and Grouping, and multi-mode platform are all valuable features."
 

Cons

"When indexing the products, one may face some issues with the tool."
"One area for Algolia's improvement is the relevance of tuning and configuration because it can take some time to properly configure ranking and filtering for a specific use case."
"I believe that Algolia could be better economically; it should work in a way whereby you can provide better pricing patterns."
"I think they could improve the analytics view."
"I think they could improve the analytics view."
"Joining is quite complex."
"The biggest issue is cost; Algolia gets expensive fast as your record count and search operations grow."
"The documentation is not beginner-friendly."
"The real-time search functionality is not operational due to its impact on system resources."
"The setup is somewhat complicated due to multiple dependencies and relations with different systems."
"They should improve its documentation. Their official documentation is not very informative. They can also improve their technical support. They don't help you much with the customized stuff. They also need to add more visuals. Currently, they have line charts, bar charts, and things like that, and they can add more types of visuals. They should also improve the alerts. They are not very simple to use and are a bit complex. They could add more options to the alerting system."
"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. We faced a few issues."
"Elasticsearch could be improved in terms of scalability."
"I think the GUI part of the solution has the most room for improvement."
"It would be useful to include an assistant into Kibana for recommendations, advice, tutorials, or things that can help improve my daily work with Elastic Search."
"From the UI point of view, we are using most probably Kibana, and I think they can do much better than that."
"Encountered issues with both master-slave and SolrCloud. Indexing and serving traffic from same collection has very poor performance. Some components are slow for searching."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
"The solution's grammar and syntax should be easier."
"It does take a little bit of effort to use and understand the solution. It would help us a lot if the solution offered up more documentation or tutorials to help with training or troubleshooting."
"Encountered issues with both master-slave and SolrCloud. Indexing and serving traffic from same collection has very poor performance; some components are slow for searching."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
"With increased sharding, performance degrades. Merger, when present, is a bottle-neck. Peer-to-peer sync has issues in SolrCloud when index is incrementally updated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are currently on a contract with Algolia for licensing and price."
"The product is cheap."
"I have heard that Algolia is an expensive solution."
"Algolia is a cool, super-easy-to-use, and affordable tool."
"In terms of the cost of Algolia, the tool is really expensive for us in Brazil since it comes to about half a million dollars."
"For any developer starting out, it is worth it."
"The tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"We are paying $1,500 a month to use the solution. If you want to have endpoint protection you need to pay more."
"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
"It can be expensive."
"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"The premium license is expensive."
"The only costs in addition to the standard licensing fees are related to the hardware, depending on whether it is cloud-based, or on-premise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Algolia?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Algolia are based on a pay-as-you-go model, which is very efficient. The c...
What needs improvement with Algolia?
The cost scales aggressively as the record count and search operations grow. Keeping the index in sync with our sourc...
What is your primary use case for Algolia?
Algolia powers the font search browse experience at Monotype, where users can search by font name, style, classificat...
What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is ve...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
On the subject of pricing, Elastic Search is very cost-efficient. You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
From the UI point of view, we are using most probably Kibana, and I think they can do much better than that. That is ...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Birchbox, Twitch, Lacoste, Stripe, WW, Medium, Cousera, National Geographic, Zendesk, Magento
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
eHarmony, Sears, StubHub, Best Buy, Instagram, Netflix, Disney, AT&T, eBay, AOL, Bloomberg, Comcast, Ticketmaster, Travelocity, MTV Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic, Algolia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Search as a Service. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.