head to head · open source
Elasticsearch vs Quickwit
Elasticsearch has 77,925 GitHub stars, 26,069 forks, 6,059 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Quickwit has 11,651 stars, 597 forks, 815 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Elasticsearch leads on adoption by 569% (77,925 vs 11,651 stars). Elasticsearch is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence; Quickwit is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Elasticsearch has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, Quickwit 5%. Elasticsearch was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (search-engine), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | Quickwit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 26K | ⑂ 597 |
| 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 Quickwit if
- You want the Quickwit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Quickwit fits your workflow better
About Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built in Java, designed for near real time search, scalability, and high performance data querying on production workloads. It serves as the core storage and indexing layer of Elastic’s open stack and supports full text, structured, and vector based search.
read the full Elasticsearch overview →
About Quickwit
Quickwit is an open source search engine written in Rust under the Apache 2.0 license. It is positioned for observability workloads, especially log management and distributed tracing, and it names metrics support as a roadmap item. The project lives in the cloud native search engine ecosystem and is designed to search data stored in object storage.
read the full Quickwit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Elasticsearch or Quickwit more popular?
Elasticsearch has 77,925 GitHub stars and Quickwit has 11,651. Elasticsearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Elasticsearch and Quickwit free?
Both are open source. Elasticsearch has no licence declared in this registry, and Quickwit is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Elasticsearch and Quickwit?
Elasticsearch is written in Java and Quickwit 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 Quickwit?
Choose Elasticsearch if you want the larger community (77,925 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Quickwit if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.