head to head · open source
Meilisearch vs Quickwit
Meilisearch has 59,317 GitHub stars, 2,710 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Quickwit has 11,651 stars, 597 forks, 815 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Meilisearch leads on adoption by 409% (59,317 vs 11,651 stars). Meilisearch is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; Quickwit is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Meilisearch has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Quickwit 5%. Quickwit 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
| Meilisearch | Quickwit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 59K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 597 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Meilisearch if
- You weight community size — 59K 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 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 Meilisearch
Meilisearch is an open source search engine built in Rust that delivers fast, relevant search results for applications and websites. It operates as a standalone service with a RESTful HTTP API, designed to integrate directly into existing data pipelines without requiring major architectural changes.
read the full Meilisearch 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 Meilisearch or Quickwit more popular?
Meilisearch has 59,317 GitHub stars and Quickwit has 11,651. Meilisearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Meilisearch and Quickwit free?
Both are open source. Meilisearch 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 Meilisearch and Quickwit?
Meilisearch is written in Rust 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, Meilisearch or Quickwit?
Choose Meilisearch if you want the larger community (59,317 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.