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Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Amazon OpenSearch Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2025

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 OpenSearch Service
Ranking in Search as a Service
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (25th), Log Management (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 8.0%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 5.4%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
Johnny Suleiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalability is a key feature as it allows easy scaling of the platform without downtime
OpenSearch is used as a search engine for specific logs, mainly in e-commerce and monitoring the logs themselves. It is very valuable for e-commerce, enabling data analysis on application logs and customer behavior, and can be integrated with other services, including AI and machine learning…

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."
"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."
"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The quality of the solution is good."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is the cloud aspect. I do not need to have the physical infrastructure, everything is in the cloud."
"AWS CloudSearch's best features are good performance under high CPU and memory use, and ease of deployment and scaling."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Elasticsearch are ease of use, native JSON, and efficiency. Additionally, handles many use cases and search grammar was useful."
"The stability of the product is good."
"In case there is a failure, Elastic manages everything well, and there no major downtime."
"I would definitely recommend Amazon OpenSearch Service to other professionals due to its fast and reliable search capabilities."
"Amazon OpenSearch Service has enhanced our organization's ability to store and search large amounts of data efficiently."
"The initial set up is very easy...We really appreciate Amazon!"
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"It's a good log management platform. In terms of infrastructure management, it's good."
 

Cons

"Security is a concern but they're working on it."
"I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds."
"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."
"Index cleanup is sometimes painful. No easy way to clean indexes or a bulk of documents. Full indexing or regeneration of entire indexes sometimes gets stuck. In one instance, we had to delete the entire index and re-create it."
"The solution should improve the recovery aspects that it has on offer."
"Latlon data type only supports single value per document. All other types support multiple values. We faced issues with this because we had scenarios where, for each document, we needed to store multiple latlon values for different geographical locations."
"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."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"There is a problem with the database. Amazon only provides the hosting to run our applications bias, but there is no option to manage the database within the Elasticsearch product."
"One glaring issue was with our mapping configuration as the system accepted the data we posted, but after a few months, when we attempted complex queries, we realized the date formatting had become problematic."
"The configuration should be more straightforward because we had to select a lot of things."
"They can enhance data visualization."
"It would be beneficial to have some level of customization available in the managed service, tailored to the specific use cases of the end users."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"Amazon Elasticsearch can improve the bullion in the near search and the ease of integration with Kibana. Additionally, there could be more flexibility in the configuration and documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."
"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."
"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"You only pay for what you use."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
What do you like most about Amazon OpenSearch Service?
We retrieve historical data with just a click of a button to move it from cold to hot or warm because it's already stored in the backend storage
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon OpenSearch Service?
I would consider the pricing as a six based on how much data we are handling; if we handle minimal data, it's cheap, but for large data, it becomes costly. Our clients usually pay between $1,000 to...
What needs improvement with Amazon OpenSearch Service?
In terms of data handling capabilities with Amazon OpenSearch Service, they can be complex and managing data in comparison to other SIM solutions is a major drawback, as it is very hard to handle t...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Elasticsearch Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
VIDCOIN, Wyng, Yellow New Zealand, zipMoney, Cimri, Siemens, Unbabel
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Algolia and others in Search as a Service. Updated: July 2025.
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