Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Amazon Kendra 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS CloudSearch
Ranking in Search as a Service
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon Kendra
Ranking in Search as a Service
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 7.0%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Kendra is 9.0%, down from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Kendra9.0%
Amazon AWS CloudSearch7.0%
Other84.0%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

AmrIssa - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and fully managed search service with diverse data type support and robust security
We use it as our hosting solution, serving as the backbone for our systems, which include Rubrik and SAP It is remarkably efficient and beneficial. A reboot should be enhanced. There are issues with the VBC collection. I have been working with it for four years. I would rate the stability ten…
AM
Kendra has a nice AI built-in, enhancing the search experience and highly stable solution
There are many valuable features. For example, there are many documents that contain a lot of legal information. So we want to understand whether all the documents have the required complaint-related information or not, and whether they are following the standard policies of documentation. We have multiple documents, so we don't know which document has the sought-after information. Therefore, we want to perform an enterprise search on it. So there are a lot of use cases we are trying to build using these newer technologies, specifically Kendra. Moreover, Kendra has AI, which has an upper edge, and that is really helpful. It has a nice AI inbuilt, which improves the search part of it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."
"The quality of the solution is good."
"AWS CloudSearch's best features are good performance under high CPU and memory use, and ease of deployment and scaling."
"It's the best solution for any company. It has a hosting ERP system for any task. AWS is stable. AWS is more flexible and its elastic concept is a new concept. AWS is also very secure. It has many layers of security, like hardware security and software security. This is a big issue."
"It is remarkably efficient and beneficial."
"CDN service reduces latency when accessing our web application."
"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."
"Provides flexibility to tune the relevance and ranking of results."
"We have good use cases where stability is everything. So it's a stable solution."
 

Cons

"Security is a concern but they're working on it."
"We'd like to see more database features."
"A reboot should be enhanced."
"AWS CloudSearch's documentation isn't very clear. Also, the on-premise version of the solution is less stable than the cloud version."
"I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds."
"Maybe they are common in Egypt, but you should make a request on Amazon to create a function to monitor CPU performance, memory, and files. It is very difficult in AWS. I would tell them it should be simple, just drag and drop. I think they could develop this option so we can drag and drop to monitor performance of the processor and memory."
"Regarding the period of propagation on CDN servers, sometimes we update photos or files and we don't see the update instantly. We need to wait for sometime."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."
"The time it takes for indexing documents could be reduced."
"There are some token limits."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one point is cheap, and ten points are expensive, I rate the pricing as medium or reasonable."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."
"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch charging is based on how many resources you consume or and the solution is known to be a bit expensive."
"The pricing falls in the medium range."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Search as a Service solutions are best for your needs.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon AWS CloudSearch?
In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable. I would rate it eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Amazon AWS CloudSearch?
A reboot should be enhanced. There are issues with the VBC collection.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Amazon Kendra and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.