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Azure AI Search 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

Azure AI Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
5th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (10th), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 10.4%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 19.3%, up from 10.1% 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%
Azure AI Search10.4%
Other70.3%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Sandeep Srirangam - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"The search functionality time has been reduced to a few milliseconds."
"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
"The product is pretty resilient."
"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."
"Creates indexers to get data from different data sources."
"The customer engagement was good."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"A nonstructured database that can manage large amounts of nonstructured data."
"The most valuable feature is the out of the box Kibana."
"It gives us the possibility to store and query this data and also do this efficiently and securely and without delays."
"It is stable."
"Implementing the main requirements regarding my support portal​."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is user behavior analysis."
 

Cons

"The pricing is room for improvement."
"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."
"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."
"The after-hour services are slow."
"The solution's stability could be better."
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"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."
"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."
"Performance improvement could come from skipping background refresh on search idle shards (which is already being addressed in the upcoming seventh version)."
"I would like to see more integration for the solution with different platforms."
"Elastic Enterprise Search can improve by adding some kind of search that can be used out of the box without too much struggle with configuration. With every kind of search engine, there is some kind of special function that you need to do. A simple out-of-the-box search would be useful."
"Improving machine learning capabilities would be beneficial."
"The solution must provide AI integrations."
"We'd like more user-friendly integrations."
"They should improve its documentation. Their official documentation is not very informative. They can also improve their technical support. They don't help you much with the customized stuff. They also need to add more visuals. Currently, they have line charts, bar charts, and things like that, and they can add more types of visuals. They should also improve the alerts. They are not very simple to use and are a bit complex. They could add more options to the alerting system."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search. That's the only area in which I'm not sure whether it's a limitation on our end in terms of knowledge or a technical limitation from Elastic Enterprise Search. There is another solution we are looking at that rides on Elastic Enterprise Search. And the limit is for any sort of records that you're doing or data analysis you're trying to do, you can only extract 500 records at a time. I know the open-source nature has a lot of limitations, Otherwise, Elastic Enterprise Search is a fantastic solution and I'd recommend it to anyone."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
"The cost is comparable."
"​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."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"The solution is affordable."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"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."
"This product is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"​The pricing and license model are clear: node-based model."
"The solution is affordable."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
The after-hour services are slow. It could be better.
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?
Elastic Search could improve in areas such as search criteria and query processes, as search times were longer prior to implementing Elastic Search. Elastic Search has limitations for handling huge...
 

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: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.