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

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Elastic Search 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 4.6%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 19.3%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 5.4%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search19.3%
Amazon OpenSearch Service4.6%
Solr5.4%
Other70.7%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

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…
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.
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

"In case there is a failure, Elastic manages everything well, and there no major downtime."
"Our customers have seen tangible benefits from Amazon OpenSearch Service, especially in terms of their applications running smoothly, so they do get a return on investment."
"Amazon OpenSearch Service provides a managed database solution, so we don't need to manage everything ourselves."
"It enables us to efficiently search and retrieve our event data, offering us a versatile approach to locate specific information within these logs."
"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"
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"The stability of the product is good."
"It's a good log management platform. In terms of infrastructure management, it's good."
"The search speed is most valuable and important."
"It is easy to scale with the cluster node model.​"
"It is stable."
"Search is really powerful."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the opportunity to search behind and between different logs."
"We had many reasons to implement Elasticsearch for search term solutions. Elasticsearch products provide enterprise landscape support for different areas of the company."
"I appreciate that Elastic Enterprise Search is easy to use and that we have people on our team who are able to manage it effectively."
"Elastic Enterprise Search is scalable. On a scale of one to 10, with one being not scalable and 10 being very scalable, I give Elastic Enterprise Search a 10."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
"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."
 

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."
"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."
"The price is fair yet leans towards the expensive side. I'd rate it five out of ten with respect to capabilities vs. cost."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"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."
"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."
"We faced documentation challenges during integration after migrating from Elasticsearch to Amazon OpenSearch Service. Better documentation on integration, query handling, and a more user-friendly UI could enhance the product."
"It is hard to learn and understand because it is a very big platform. This is the main reason why we still have nothing in production. We have to learn some things before we get there."
"Elasticsearch should have simpler commands for window filtering."
"Machine learning on search needs improvement."
"The solution's integration and configuration are not easy. Not many people know exactly what to do."
"Its licensing needs to be improved. They don't offer a perpetual license. They want to know how many nodes you will be using, and they ask for an annual subscription. Otherwise, they don't give you permission to use it. Our customers are generally military or police departments or customers without connection to the internet. Therefore, this model is not suitable for us. This subscription-based model is not the best for OEM vendors. Another annoying thing about Elasticsearch is its roadmap. We are developing something, and then they say, "Okay. We have removed that feature in this release," and when we are adapting to that release, they say, "Okay. We have removed that one as well." We don't know what they will remove in the next version. They are not looking for backward compatibility from the customers' perspective. They just remove a feature and say, "Okay. We've removed this one." In terms of new features, it should have an ODBC driver so that you can search and integrate this product with existing BI tools and reporting tools. Currently, you need to go for third parties, such as CData, in order to achieve this. ODBC driver is the most important feature required. Its Community Edition does not have security features. For example, you cannot authenticate with a username and password. It should have security features. They might have put it in the latest release."
"This product could be improved with additional security, and the addition of support for machine learning devices."
"They could improve some of the platform's infrastructure management capabilities."
"I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten. The main issue is a general sum of all factors."
"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."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
"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

"You only pay for what you use."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"we are using a licensed version of the product."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"The solution is free."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"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 only costs in addition to the standard licensing fees are related to the hardware, depending on whether it is cloud-based, or on-premise."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Search as a Service solutions are best for your needs.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
10%
 

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 Business33
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise33
No data available
 

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 s...
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, ...
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 compa...
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 ve...
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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elasticsearch Service
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

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.
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 Elastic, Algolia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Search as a Service. Updated: August 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.