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Amazon AWS CloudSearch 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:
 

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
Solr
Ranking in Search as a Service
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
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 Solr is 5.3%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS CloudSearch7.0%
Solr5.3%
Other87.7%
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…
reviewer823641 - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"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."
"AWS CloudSearch's best features are good performance under high CPU and memory use, and ease of deployment and scaling."
"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The quality of the solution is good."
"The best feature is its scalability in that Cloud is always on the fly."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see more database features."
"I do not have any suggestions for improvements at this time."
"The price of the solution can be expensive."
"AWS CloudSearch's documentation isn't very clear. Also, the on-premise version of the solution is less stable than the cloud version."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"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."
"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."
"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."
"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
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
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 Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Solr and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.