head to head · open source
Meilisearch vs Manticore Search
Meilisearch has 59,758 GitHub stars, 2,786 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Manticore Search has 12,075 stars, 655 forks, 651 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Meilisearch leads on adoption by 395% (59,758 vs 12,075 stars). Meilisearch is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; Manticore Search is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. Meilisearch has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Manticore Search 5%. Manticore Search was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (api, database, full-text-search, search), 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
| Meilisearch | Manticore Search | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 655 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Meilisearch if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Manticore Search if
- You want the Manticore Search feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Manticore Search fits your workflow better
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 →
About Manticore Search
Easy to use open source fast database for search Manticore Search is an easy to use, open source, and fast database designed for search. It is a great alternative to Elasticsearch. Website • Downloads • Docs • Blog • Courses • Forum • Slack • Telegram (En) • Telegram (Ru) • Twitter • User feedback Introduction What distinguishes Manticore from other solutions is: It's very fast and therefore more cost efficient than alternatives. In the current reproducible benchmarks, Manticore Search 27.1.5 is: 340x faster than MySQL 9.7.1 and 6.51x faster than Typesense 27.1 for 1.1M Hacker News comments 3.85x faster than…
read the full Manticore Search overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Meilisearch or Manticore Search more popular?
Meilisearch has 59,758 GitHub stars and Manticore Search has 12,075. Meilisearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Meilisearch and Manticore Search free?
Both are open source. Meilisearch has no licence declared in this registry, and Manticore Search is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Meilisearch and Manticore Search?
Meilisearch is written in Rust and Manticore Search in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Meilisearch or Manticore Search?
Choose Meilisearch if you want the larger community (59,758 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Manticore Search if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.