Meilisearch

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine that returns typo-tolerant, ranked results in milliseconds and now adds hybrid semantic search for AI retrieval. Developers embed it behind product catalogues, documentation sites and app search boxes. The free option is the self-hosted open-source build; Meilisearch Cloud offers a 14-day trial rather than a permanent free tier.

What the free plan gives you

Running the open-source binary or Docker image on your own server gives you the full engine: full-text and vector search, faceting, filtering, multi-language tokenisation, synonyms, ranking rules and the REST API and SDKs, with no document or query limits beyond your hardware. It is a single binary that runs comfortably on a small VPS. Meilisearch Cloud lets you try the managed service for 14 days without a credit card, after which it starts at $20 per month.

Where the free plan stops

Self-hosting means you handle backups, upgrades, scaling and uptime yourself, and there is no vendor support. The Cloud plan, from $20 per month with usage-based or resource-based billing, takes over the infrastructure and includes email support and scaling. Enterprise, on custom pricing, adds dedicated resources, an uptime SLA of up to 99.999%, SSO with SAML, SOC 2 documentation, analytics, merchandising and personalisation features and Slack support. Some of those features, such as analytics and merchandising, are not part of the open-source build.

Who it suits

If you or your team are comfortable running a service and want fast search with no per-query bill, the open-source edition is a complete product. Teams who would rather not operate it, or who need the SLA, SSO and analytics that only exist in the managed tiers, should budget from $20 a month for Cloud.