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Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Elastic Search comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 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 OpenSearch Service
Ranking in Search as a Service
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (24th), Log Management (22nd)
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (8th), Vector Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 6.9%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 19.1%, up from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search19.1%
Amazon OpenSearch Service6.9%
Other74.0%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Cybersecurity Lead Consultant at Cywarden
Handling complexities challenges with data processing while visualizations enhance monitoring and debugging
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 the data. We definitely want Amazon to optimize the data handling aspect, as ElasticSearch is the parent of OpenSearch. If Amazon makes changes in OpenSearch, it would be very useful for us, making it more user-friendly with simple buttons to perform tasks.
MichaelSmith9 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Unified search has powered feature‑driven research with minimal maintenance overhead
We haven't had the opportunity to use the hybrid search with Elastic Search yet. I think there's a place for it in our long-term solution, but we're not quite there yet. We haven't yet used any AI features built into Elastic Search. To do what we want to do with Elastic Search, the queries can get complex and require a fuller understanding of the DSL. Once we start to build that understanding, it's another muscle we have, so it's not a bad thing, but it just takes a while to get up and running with expertise for our engineers. It's not hard to learn how to use more complex things in Elastic Search; it's just a challenge we're going to face.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It enables us to efficiently search and retrieve our event data, offering us a versatile approach to locate specific information within these logs."
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"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."
"I would definitely recommend Amazon OpenSearch Service to other professionals due to its fast and reliable search capabilities."
"Amazon OpenSearch Service provides a managed database solution, so we don't need to manage everything ourselves."
"They have the good documentation in the help text and that is the reason the Amazon is the perfect solution in the current market."
"The business analytics capabilities are the most important feature it provides."
"In case there is a failure, Elastic manages everything well, and there no major downtime."
"The solution has great scalability."
"It is stable."
"The solution has good security features. I have been happy with the dashboards and interface."
"Elastic Search is very quick when handling a large volume of data."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the opportunity to search behind and between different logs."
"Elasticsearch includes a graphical user interface (GUI) called Kibana. The GUI features are extremely beneficial to us."
"All the quality features are there. There are about 60 to 70 reports available."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
 

Cons

"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."
"The pricing aspect is a concern. The service is way too costly. For the past month, I used only 30 to 40 MB of data, and the cost was $500. AWS could improve pricing."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"I want to see a new feature in Amazon Elasticsearch Service that allows users to create default filters for filtered levels."
"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 price is fair yet leans towards the expensive side. I'd rate it five out of ten with respect to capabilities vs. cost."
"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."
"I would say that, basically, the configuration part is an area with a shortcoming...Some upgradation is required on the configuration side so that we can get to use it."
"While integrating with tools like agents for ingesting data from sources like firewalls is valuable, I believe prioritizing improvements to the core product would be more beneficial."
"Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve."
"The different applications need to be individually deployed."
"An improvement would be to have an interface that allows easier navigation and tracing of logs."
"Improving machine learning capabilities would be beneficial."
"The documentation for Elastic Search can be challenging if you're not already familiar with the platform."
"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."
"Elastic Search needs to improve its technical support. It should be customer-friendly and have good support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
"You only pay for what you use."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"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 tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"We use the free version for some logs, but not extensive use."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"The premium license is expensive."
"The price could be better."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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?
Elastic Search's pricing totally depends on the server. Managed services from AWS are used, and we have worked on a self-managed Elastic Search cluster. On the AWS side, it is very expensive becaus...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search has an annoying limitation regarding page size. It has a specific limit for queries on Elastic Search, and the default is ten thousand, and we can increase it. However, after increas...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elasticsearch Service
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

VIDCOIN, Wyng, Yellow New Zealand, zipMoney, Cimri, Siemens, Unbabel
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 OpenSearch Service vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.