head to head · open source
Elasticsearch vs Meilisearch
Elasticsearch has 78,462 GitHub stars, 26,239 forks, 6,059 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Meilisearch has 59,758 stars, 2,786 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Elasticsearch leads on adoption by 31% (78,462 vs 59,758 stars). Elasticsearch is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence; Meilisearch is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. Elasticsearch has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, Meilisearch 5%. Elasticsearch was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Elasticsearch | Meilisearch | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 60K |
| License | Custom / other | Custom / other |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 26K | ⑂ 2.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Elasticsearch if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Meilisearch if
- You want the Meilisearch feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Meilisearch fits your workflow better
About Elasticsearch
= Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine, scalable data store and vector database optimized for speed and relevance on production scale workloads. Elasticsearch is the foundation of Elastic's open Stack platform. Search in near real time over massive datasets, perform vector searches, integrate with generative AI applications, and much more. Use cases enabled by Elasticsearch include: Augmented Generation (RAG)] search] Full text search Logs Metrics Application performance monitoring (APM) Security logs \... and more! To learn more about Elasticsearch's features and…
read the full Elasticsearch overview →
About Meilisearch
Website Roadmap Meilisearch Cloud Blog Documentation FAQ Discord ⚡ A lightning fast search engine that fits effortlessly into your apps, websites, and workflow 🔍 Meilisearch helps you shape a delightful search experience in a snap, offering features that work out of the box to speed up your workflow. 🖥 Examples Movies — An application to help you find streaming platforms to watch movies using hybrid search. Flickr — Search and explore one hundred million Flickr images with semantic search. Ecommerce — Ecommerce website using disjunctive facets, range and rating filtering, and pagination. Home Booking A…
read the full Meilisearch overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Elasticsearch or Meilisearch more popular?
Elasticsearch has 78,462 GitHub stars and Meilisearch has 59,758. Elasticsearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Elasticsearch and Meilisearch free?
Neither Elasticsearch nor Meilisearch declares a licence in this registry, so check each project's own repository before relying on either for a commercial use. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Elasticsearch and Meilisearch?
Elasticsearch is written in Java and Meilisearch in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Elasticsearch or Meilisearch?
Choose Elasticsearch if you want the larger community (78,462 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Meilisearch if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.