Meilisearch is an open-source search engine that adds fast, relevant, typo-tolerant search to websites and applications through a simple RESTful API.
Written in Rust, Meilisearch is designed to return results in milliseconds as users type. Beyond classic full-text search it supports filtering, faceting, geosearch and hybrid search that combines keywords with vector embeddings, making it a popular open-source alternative to Algolia and Elasticsearch for app search.
Key features
- Search-as-you-type results in milliseconds
- Typo tolerance, synonyms and stop words
- Filters, facets, sorting and geosearch
- Hybrid and semantic search with embeddings
- Multi-tenancy with tenant tokens
- SDKs for JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust and more
- Front-end integrations such as InstantSearch
- Self-hosted open-source engine or managed Meilisearch Cloud
Who it's for
Meilisearch is for developers adding search to e-commerce stores, SaaS products, documentation and content sites who want great relevance without tuning a complex search cluster.
Common use cases
- Product search for an online store
- In-app search across a SaaS product's records
- Documentation and site search
- AI-powered semantic search over content
Pricing
The Meilisearch engine is open source and free to self-host. Meilisearch Cloud starts at $20 per month and offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Usage-based plans start at $30 per month (100K documents, 50K searches), and resource-based instances start at about $23 per month. Enterprise plans add premium features and support.
Alternatives
- Algolia: hosted search-as-a-service
- Typesense: open-source typo-tolerant search engine
- Elasticsearch: distributed search and analytics engine
FAQ
Is Meilisearch free?
Yes. Meilisearch is open source and free to self-host; Meilisearch Cloud starts at $20 per month with a 14-day free trial.
What is Meilisearch used for?
Meilisearch is used to add fast, typo-tolerant search to websites, apps and e-commerce stores.
Meilisearch vs Algolia: which is better?
Algolia is a mature hosted service, while Meilisearch offers similar instant search and can be self-hosted for free or run on a cheaper managed cloud.
Meilisearch vs Elasticsearch: what's the difference?
Elasticsearch is a general-purpose search and analytics engine that needs more tuning, while Meilisearch focuses on simple, instant end-user search.
Does Meilisearch support vector search?
Yes. Meilisearch supports hybrid and semantic search using embeddings.
What language is Meilisearch written in?
Meilisearch is written in Rust.