Meilisearch vs Typesense vs Algolia vs Elastic App Search
Four search providers with very different free tiers — an open-source engine you self-host with unlimited docs, a tunable open-source alternative you self-host, the forever-free hosted search API leader, and the enterprise-scale Elasticsearch layer — compared on free requests, records, self-hosting, and relevance tuning.
| Meilisearch | Typesense | Algolia | Elastic App Search | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier note | Open-source search engine (MIT) you can self-host with unlimited documents and queries; Meilisearch Cloud no longer offers a forever-free tier (free trial only). Sub-50ms typo-tolerant search. | Open-source search engine (GPLv3) you can self-host with unlimited records; Typesense Cloud offers a 14-day free trial, then paid hosted plans. Fast, typo-tolerant, and tunable relevance. | Managed, hosted search-as-a-service with a forever-free Community plan: 10,000 search requests/month and 10,000 records. Sub-100ms global edge search, typo-tolerance, and React InstantSearch UI libraries. | Elastic App Search is a managed search-product layer over Elasticsearch — no forever-free cloud tier (14-day trial). Self-host the open-source Elasticsearch distribution (Apache 2.0 / SSPL) for unlimited free on-prem search, analytics, and relevance tuning. |
| Bandwidth | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Builds | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Requests | unlimited on self-hosted; Meilisearch Cloud free tier deprecated | unlimited on self-hosted; Typesense Cloud has a 14-day trial (no forever-free) | 10k search requests/month + 10k records | 14-day trial; free self-hosted via the open-source Elasticsearch distribution |
| Custom domains | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Paid from | $30/mo | $9/mo | $1/mo | $95/mo |
| Generosity ★ | 19 | 25 | 28 | 4 |
| Last verified | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 |
| Visit site | Meilisearch ↗ | Typesense ↗ | Algolia ↗ | Elastic App Search ↗ |
Data verified 2025-09-01.