Search APIs

Search APIs index your records and answer queries from your app or site, with typo tolerance, filters and, increasingly, vector and hybrid search. They differ most in how they bill: per search request and record, by the size of a dedicated cluster, or either one.

We compare them on the same six indicators, read from each vendor's pricing, security and documentation pages:

• Pricing clarity: how many billing units you must estimate, whether you size the cluster yourself, and whether the pages agree.
• Free tier: a permanent free plan and its record allowance, or the length of a trial.
• Price for 100,000 records and 500,000 searches: the monthly cost at one stated scenario, with the sizing assumption named where a vendor bills by cluster size.
• AI and vector search on self-serve plans: vector or hybrid search, embeddings created for you, AI relevance features and conversational answers without an enterprise contract.
• Compliance and data residency: the vendor's own SOC 2 Type II report, ISO 27001, a HIPAA BAA, an EU hosting region.
• Team, control and portability: SAML SSO, an open-source engine you can self-host, and a documented record export.

Because the billing models differ, prices are compared at one reference scenario and the arithmetic is shown. Each review says which pages it was written from and when. Where we have run a product hands-on, the evidence is on its page.