Azure AI Search vs Solr comparison

Microsoft and Apache are both solutions in the Search as a Service category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.0, while Apache is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 11.5% mindshare in SS, compared to Apache’s 6.1% mindshare. Additionally, 62% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Apache users who would recommend it.

Azure AI Search

Read 8 Azure AI Search reviews

1,070 Views
1,070 Comparison Views

62% willing to recommend

Solr

Read 4 Solr reviews

585 Views
585 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure AI Search

Solr

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure AI Search and Solr based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Search as a Service solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure AI Search vs. Solr Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure AI Search vs. Solr

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,164 peers since 2012

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

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Solr

Ranking in Search as a Service

8th

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 11.5%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 6.1%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Search as a Service

Featured Reviews

Sandeep Srirangam

Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Diebold Nixdorf

Customer engagement & documentation about APIs are great, but it would be good if the UI is a bit more intuitive for search experience

I use the solution mainly to search the logs and to search for VMs by their names or subscription names. I wouldn't rate it great since the logs are a bit complicated The solution was really pretty good. The customer engagement was good. The presented documentation or exposure to the APIs to get…

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reviewer823641

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Creates indexers to get data from different data sources."

"Because all communication is done via the REST API, data is retrieved quickly in JSON format to reduce overhead and latency."

"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."

"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."

"The customer engagement was good."

"The product is pretty resilient."

"The product is extremely configurable, allowing you to customize the search experience to suit your needs."

"The amount of flexibility and agility is really assuring."

More Azure AI Search pros

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."

"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

"The after-hour services are slow."

"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."

"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product."

"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."

"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."

"The pricing is room for improvement."

"The solution's stability could be better."

"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."

More Azure AI Search cons

"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."

"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."

"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."

"The solution is affordable."

"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."

"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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865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Search?

The product is pretty resilient.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Search?

The after-hour services are slow. It could be better.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Azure Search?

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

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Comparisons

Amazon Kendra vs Azure AI Search

Compared 43% of the time

Elastic Search vs Azure AI Search

Compared 32% of the time

Algolia vs Azure AI Search

Compared 5% of the time

Xapien vs Azure AI Search

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Azure AI Search

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure AI Search Competitors

Elastic Search vs Solr

Compared 29% of the time

Algolia vs Solr

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Solr

Compared 19% of the time

Amazon Kendra vs Solr

Compared 10% of the time

More Solr Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Search as a Service

July 2025

Download Azure AI Search product report

Buyer's Guide

Search as a Service

July 2025

Download Solr product report

Overview

Azure Search is a search-as-a-service cloud solution that gives developers APIs and tools for adding a rich search experience over your data in web, mobile, and enterprise applications. Functionality is exposed through a simple REST API or .NET SDK that masks the inherent complexity of search technology. In addition to APIs, the Azure portal provides administration and prototyping support. Infrastructure and availability are managed by Microsoft.

Microsoft

Solr is highly reliable, scalable and fault tolerant, providing distributed indexing, replication and load-balanced querying, automated failover and recovery, centralized configuration and more. Solr powers the search and navigation features of many of the world's largest internet sites.

Apache

Sample Customers

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa

eHarmony, Sears, StubHub, Best Buy, Instagram, Netflix, Disney, AT&T, eBay, AOL, Bloomberg, Comcast, Ticketmaster, Travelocity, MTV Networks

Buyer's Guide

Azure AI Search vs. Solr

July 2025

Free Report: Azure AI Search vs. Solr

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure AI Search vs. Solr and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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We monitor all Search as a Service reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.