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Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Elastic Search 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
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (10th), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 7.2%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 19.3%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search19.3%
Amazon AWS CloudSearch7.2%
Other73.5%
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…
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The quality of the solution is good."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is its ability to receive data quickly. You can access your data easily in a short time."
"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."
"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."
"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"A nonstructured database that can manage large amounts of nonstructured data."
"The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch is its convenience in handling unstructured data."
"Data indexing of historical data is the most beneficial feature of the product."
"I have found the sort capability of Elastic very useful for allowing us to find the information we need very quickly."
"The solution has great scalability."
"Using real-time search functionality to support operational decisions has been helpful."
"Helps us to store the data in key value pairs and, based on that, we can produce visualisations in Kibana."
 

Cons

"I do not have any suggestions for improvements at this time."
"I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds."
"We'd like to see more database features."
"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."
"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."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."
"The price of the solution can be expensive."
"Elastic Search could benefit from a more user-friendly onboarding process for beginners."
"Improving machine learning capabilities would be beneficial."
"There are a lot of manual steps on the operating system. It could be simplified in the user interface."
"The one area that can use improvement is the automapping of fields."
"Elastic Search needs to improve authentication. It also needs to work on the Kibana visualization dashboard."
"Machine learning on search needs improvement."
"Ratio aggregation is not supported in this solution."
"I don't see improvements at the moment. The current setup is working well for me, and I'm satisfied with it. Integrating with different platforms is also fine, and I'm not recommending any changes or enhancements right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"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."
"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch charging is based on how many resources you consume or and the solution is known to be a bit expensive."
"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."
"The price could be better."
"We are using the Community Edition because Elasticsearch's licensing model is not flexible or suitable for us. They ask for an annual subscription. We also got the development consultancy from Elasticsearch for 60 days or something like that, but they were just trying to do the same trick. That's why we didn't purchase it. We are just using the Community Edition."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"It can move from $10,000 US Dollars per year to any price based on how powerful you need the searches to be and the capacity in terms of storage and process."
"The tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"I rate Elastic Search's pricing an eight out of ten."
"​The pricing and license model are clear: node-based model."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise33
 

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 ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search could improve in areas such as search criteria and query processes, as search times were longer prior to implementing Elastic Search. Elastic Search has limitations for handling huge...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.