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Azure AI Search vs Elastic Search comparison

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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

Azure AI Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (5th), Vector Databases (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 11.7%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 15.7%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search15.7%
Azure AI Search11.7%
Other72.6%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Prabakaran SP - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Architect at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Automated indexing has streamlined document search workflows but semantic relevance and setup complexity still need improvement
We used the semantic search capabilities of Azure AI Search, but we haven't gotten good results in the semantic search. So we are exploring with ChromaDB, and Cosmos is having the capability of doing the semantic search as well. We are exploring that. A few queries we use analytics search, which works and is good. Analytics search is good. We are trying the ML capabilities of the product since we are using Databricks and other tools for building the models, MLflow, and related items. We are still working on proof of concepts, which could be better with ChromaDB or Cosmos or vector search or inbuilt Databricks vector stores. Language processing is not about user intention; it's about the context. If there is a document and you want to know the context of a particular section, then we would use vector search. Instead of traversing through the whole document, while chunking it into the vector, we'll categorize and chunk, and then we'll look only at those chunks to do a semantic search. When comparing Azure AI Search, I'm doing a proof of concept because with ChromaDB I can create instances using LangChain anywhere. For per session, I can create one ChromaDB and can remove it, which is really useful for proof of concepts. Instead of creating an Azure AI Search instance and doing that there, that is one advantage I'm seeing for the proof of concept alone, not for the entire product. I hope it should support all the embedding providers as well. Is there a viewer or tool similar to Storage Explorer? We are basically SQL-centric people, so we used to find Cosmos DB very quick for us when we search something and create indexes. I guess there is some limitation in Azure AI Search. I couldn't remember now, such as querying limitations. I'm not remembering that part.
reviewer2817942 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Logging and vector search have transformed observability and empowered reliable ai agents
Elastic Search is not specifically being used for certain purposes. I deploy Elastic Search database on the cloud and use cloud services so that nobody can attack. However, I do not use Elastic Search to resolve attack issues. The basic main purpose of Elastic Search, as of now, I feel it can do more in the AI area. Sometime I saw that when I am developing RAG and have to generate the embeddings, which I call metadata, sometimes it tries to fail. That durability or issue handling should be improved, but apart from that, I did not find anything as of now. As per my use case, whatever I am using seems pretty good. Apart from that, some definitely improvement will be there. One improvement is that it should be faster. Whenever I am searching any logs, it takes much time. For example, if I open my log in Notepad or a similar tool, I can search the text within a second. With Elastic Search, it takes a little bit of time, ten to fifteen seconds. That can be improved. Sometimes, engineers take time to assign when I create a ticket.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
"Azure Search provides plenty of benefits for business teams and sales teams, as it's a CLM system that helps you find everything related to specific customers and deals."
"The product is extremely configurable, allowing you to customize the search experience to suit your needs."
"The customer engagement was good."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."
"The product is pretty resilient."
"Usually, that search functionality used to take around 10 secs to search data, and that time has been reduced to a few milliseconds now."
"All the quality features are there. There are about 60 to 70 reports available."
"X-Pack provides good features, like authorization and alerts."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is user behavior analysis."
"Elastic Search, being a vector database, quickly indexes data, allowing for searches based on text and data directly, which I found fascinating."
"The product is scalable with good performance."
"The best feature of Elastic Search that I appreciate is its monitoring capability."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the Discovery option for the visualization of logs on a GPU instead of on the server."
"Search is really powerful."
 

Cons

"Azure AI Search could be improved regarding compatibility with Azure Blob Storage in order to keep the prompts and everything that I am using for building the tool safe."
"Azure AI Search could be improved primarily because the UX and UI could be a little bit more intuitive for persons since the learning curve could be a little bit high."
"We used the semantic search capabilities of Azure AI Search, but we haven't gotten good results in the semantic search."
"The after-hour services are slow."
"The pricing is room for improvement."
"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product.​"
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."
"I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten. The main issue is a general sum of all factors."
"The initial configuration could be easier; at first, the learning curve is a little high, and over time, it becomes easier."
"I found an issue with Elasticsearch in terms of aggregation. There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if I wanted to analyze certain IP addresses more than 10,000 times, I wouldn't be able to dump or print that information."
"It was not possible to use authentication three years back. You needed to buy the product's services for authentication."
"Elastic Search is stable and reliable until you build the cluster for one terabyte."
"The solution itself needs improvement. There is an index issue in which the data starts to crash as it increases."
"The pricing of this product needs to be more clear because I cannot understand it when I review the website."
"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 think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"The cost is comparable."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"​When telling people about the product, I always encourage them to set up a new service using the free pricing tier. This allows them to learn about the product and its capabilities in a risk-free environment. Depending on their needs, the free tier may be suitable for their projects, however enterprise applications will most likely required a higher, paid tier."
"The solution is affordable."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"We are using the open-sourced version."
"This is a free, open source software (FOSS) tool, which means no cost on the front-end. There are no free lunches in this world though. Technical skill to implement and support are costly on the back-end with ELK, whether you train/hire internally or go for premium services from Elastic."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"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 an open-source product."
"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."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise50
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
Azure AI Search could be improved regarding compatibility with Azure Blob Storage in order to keep the prompts and everything that I am using for building the tool safe. Regarding needed improvemen...
What is your primary use case for Azure Search?
My main use case for Azure AI Search is the index for the customization portal that they have. It combines data sources, indexers, and skill sets, making it a well-developed component. For example,...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure Search?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Azure AI Search is to first watch the tutorials and seek information on the website, as it is very reliable. Overall, Azure AI Search is a great...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
The pricing for Elastic Search is mainly budgeted according to the organization budget, so we take it as a yearly subscription, and that is acceptable since we do get a fair discount when we are ta...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
When we get the logs, it is mostly about how we edit the configurations and how we make changes according to the requirements of our organization. In these cases, the logs sometimes can be a bit in...
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
I am the Elastic Search admin for my organization, and we are using Elastic Search to handle the traffic to GCP. The monitoring of all the clusters and all the deployments are quite good, and compa...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa
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 Azure AI Search vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,753 professionals have used our research since 2012.