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AWS AppSync 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

AWS AppSync
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of AWS AppSync is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search2.0%
AWS AppSync0.8%
Other97.2%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Akil Saji - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of creating APIs with ongoing updates needed for automation
AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs. The ease of use is a main advantage, allowing even beginners to start from scratch and learn through AppSync. Before AWS, developing and managing APIs was quite complex. AWS provided AppSync, which assists developers and startup founders. Startups blooming everywhere benefit from this service, welcoming those who lack prior knowledge. When working on AWS, I notice that Amazon regularly implements new features. For instance, with the Lambda service, AWS is transitioning from an old editor to a new one. Similarly, AppSync frequently introduces updates and changes. This trend is making the user interface more accessible, even for individuals without a technical background. Additionally, the cost is attractive, as AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. These factors make AppSync both easy to use and cost-effective.
Louis McCoy - PeerSpot reviewer
Searches through billions of documents have become impressively fast and consistent
The seamless scalability is something I see as among the best features Elastic Search offers. The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis. I find configuring relevant searches within Elastic Search platform very straightforward. Elastic Search is easily scalable. The customer support for Elastic Search is quite good. I advise others looking into using Elastic Search to think about the future of your platform and where you intend it to be in five years, and based on that, which version of Elastic Search best suits the needs of your platform. Additionally, jump into the AI products first as you're in the planning phase so that as you're filling out your data, the AI products and machine learning products can enrich the data real-time early on in the process, which will save you a lot of time later. The overall performance of the platform, scalability of the platform and other additional features, especially when it comes to AI, really earn the nine.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"AWS has made it easy for developers like me to create and manage GraphQL APIs."
"Support for multiple data sources and formats is a fantastic feature."
"We can easily collect all the data and view historical trends using the product. We can view the applications and identify the issues effectively."
"I really like the visualization that you can do within it. That's really handy. Product-wise, it is a very good and stable product."
"I appreciate the indexing capabilities and the speed of indexing in their product, which demonstrates how quickly logs are collected and stored."
"Helps us to store the data in key value pairs and, based on that, we can produce visualisations in Kibana."
"The tool's stability and performance are good."
"Elasticsearch includes a graphical user interface (GUI) called Kibana. The GUI features are extremely beneficial to us."
"There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
 

Cons

"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"Moving to other clouds is impossible without significantly rearchitecting your applications."
"In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial."
"Elasticsearch could improve by honoring Unix environmental variables and not relying only on those provided by Java (e.g. installing plugins over the Unix http proxy)."
"Performance improvement could come from skipping background refresh on search idle shards (which is already being addressed in the upcoming seventh version)."
"They're making changes in their architecture too frequently."
"The solution must provide AI integrations."
"Elasticsearch could be improved in terms of scalability."
"Machine learning on search needs improvement."
"Could have more open source tools and testing."
"Kibana should be more friendly, especially when building dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, and it is a pay-as-you-go model."
"The version of Elastic Enterprise Search I am using is open source which is free. The pricing model should improve for the enterprise version because it is very expensive."
"The solution is free."
"we are using a licensed version of the product."
"The price could be better."
"The premium license is expensive."
"This product is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"The cost varies based on factors like usage volume, network load, data storage size, and service utilization. If your usage isn't too extensive, the cost will be lower."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise36
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS AppSync?
We initially had limited knowledge about AWS costs. As beginners, we ran many instances for over a month. Consequently, we received a bill from Amazon for around $20, which was unexpected. This hig...
What needs improvement with AWS AppSync?
In AppSync, assigning roles and permissions to APIs is necessary for accessing other AWS services. Automating this task when creating APIs would be beneficial. Regular updates might soon address th...
What is your primary use case for AWS AppSync?
Our company handles in-house projects and serves clients globally. My role with AppSync involves creating GraphQL APIs. There are different types of APIs, such as REST API, GraphQL API, and WebSock...
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?
We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agen...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AppSync
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACBL, Puresec, IDT, ASU, Public Good, cookpad, ALDO, ticketmaster
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 AWS AppSync vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.