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Azure AI Search 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 May 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 10.2%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 17.6%, up from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 5.1%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search17.6%
Azure AI Search10.2%
Solr5.1%
Other67.1%
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.
it_user823641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Search Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
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

"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"Because all communication is done via the REST API, data is retrieved quickly in JSON format to reduce overhead and latency.​"
"The features in Azure AI Search that are most valuable include the ability to automate index creation, and you can drop in the blob storage or drop in the SQL table, which will get automatically indexed."
"Creates indexers to get data from different data sources."
"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."
"Usually, that search functionality used to take around 10 secs to search data, and that time has been reduced to a few milliseconds now."
"By implementing Azure Search, I have been able to create immersive, feature-rich search experiences for my applications that feature helpful facets, in-line highlighting, and predictive results as user types."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the opportunity to search behind and between different logs."
"The observability is the best available because it provides granular insights that identify reasons for defects."
"A nonstructured database that can manage large amounts of nonstructured data."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is user behavior analysis."
"I find the solution to be fast."
"Elastic Enterprise Search is a very good solution and they should keep doing good work."
"The ability to aggregate log and machine data into a searchable index reduces time to identify and isolate issues for an application."
"Elastic Search has excellent features, particularly its scalability and speed."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
"We use Solr to index over 600k documents; it's very fast, flexible to use, and the speed of indexing individual documents has been great."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
"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."
"This is an infinitely scalable product with state-of-the-art technology, and the value of Natural Language Search is tremendous."
"One of the best aspects of the solution is the indexing; it's already indexed to all the fields in the category, so we don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing, which is great."
"​Sharding data, Faceting, Hit Highlighting, parent-child Block Join and Grouping, and multi-mode platform are all valuable features."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."
"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product.​"
"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."
"For SDKs, Azure Search currently offers solutions for .NET and Python."
"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"The solution's stability could be better."
"For SDKs, Azure Search currently offers solutions for .NET and Python. Additional platforms would be welcomed, especially native iOS and Android solutions for mobile development."
"This solution is stable, but at times the stack will freeze and you have to remove and recreate the cluster."
"Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve."
"The upgrade experience and inflexibility with fields keeps Elastic Search from being a perfect 10."
"We had initially planned to expand use of ELK because of its cheap price and the services that are included, but given the difficulty with implementation we've decided to go with Nagios instead."
"I think the GUI part of the solution has the most room for improvement."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search."
"Elastic needs to work on their Machine Learning offering because currently they have been trying to make it a black box which doesn't work for a serious user (a Data Scientist) as it doesn't give any control over the underlying algorithm."
"In Elastic Search, the improvements I would like to see require many resources."
"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."
"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."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
"The solution's grammar and syntax should be easier."
"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."
"Memory utilization could be better but it is an industrial strength tool so some overhead is to be expected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is comparable."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"​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."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"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."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"To access all the features available you require both the open source license and the production license."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"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 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
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise46
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
We used the semantic search capabilities of Azure AI Search, but we haven't gotten good results in the semantic searc...
What is your primary use case for Azure Search?
Our use case for Azure AI Search is that we earlier thought to build a vector search and used to have the vector sear...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure Search?
I can answer a few questions about Azure AI Search to share my opinion. I am still working with Azure and using Azure...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
When it comes to pricing, I think we had to pay AWS approximately 1,000 to 1,200 per month for the overall stack. I a...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search has many features, including Kibana and Logstash, which we regularly use. However, one downside in our...
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
As a developer, I use Elastic Search in developing one of my applications, basically integrating the back-end with El...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

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.
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: May 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.