Search APIs · Comparison
Algolia vs Amazon OpenSearch Service
2 products compared side by side: what you pay for with each one first, then the five access facts, entry prices, recorded plan limits and the bottom line of each review. The evidence note under the table says how each product was checked.
Side by side
| Metric | Algolia | Amazon OpenSearch Service |
|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Saves engineering timeHosted search with no cluster to size: pay per search request and record, starting from a permanent free plan. | Compliance includedManaged OpenSearch in your AWS account from $0.036 an hour, with searches unbilled and AWS SOC reports and a HIPAA BAA self-serve. |
| Overall score | 5.8 | 7.7Best |
| Free option | Free plan | Free trial |
| Card to start | No card needed | –Not measured |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $0.50/1k searches | $0.036/hour |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | Search requests and records | Instance hours, EBS storage and data transfer; or compute units and storage (Serverless) |
| Free option | Free plan: 10,000 searches and 50,000 records/mo, no card | AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, not specific to OpenSearch |
| 100,000 records, 500,000 searches/mo | $245 (Grow, listed rates) | $27.50 (t3.small.search, one node) |
| Vector or hybrid search | NeuralSearch on Elevate (annual contract) | Every domain (k-NN, neural and hybrid search) |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Both | Both (AWS reports in AWS Artifact) |
| HIPAA BAA | Not stated | Self-serve in AWS Artifact |
| EU hosting | Yes, EU West and UK on every plan | Yes, AWS EU Regions incl. Frankfurt, Ireland and Paris |
| SAML SSO | Elevate (annual contract) | IAM Identity Center at no extra charge; SAML for OpenSearch Dashboards |
| Open-source engine | No | Yes, OpenSearch (Apache 2.0) |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Algolia is the simplest to price for small volumes and the only one here with a permanent free plan. Per-request billing makes it the most expensive at our 500,000-search scenario. | From its public pages, Amazon OpenSearch Service includes compliance, SSO and an Apache 2.0 engine on self-serve terms, and searches are not billed on a domain. You size the domain yourself, and the bill has more lines than a cluster price. |
Evidence: Algolia: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Amazon OpenSearch Service: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Entry price
Baseline: each product's cheapest paid plan, per month. Included usage differs, so read the line under each price.
- AlgoliaGrow$0.50/1k searches10,000 search requests and 100,000 records included; then $0.50 per 1,000 requests and $0.40 per 1,000 records
- Billed monthly, no contract
- Keyword search, query suggestions, manual synonyms
- Rules: 10 per index
- 30-day analytics retention
- Amazon OpenSearch Servicet3.small.search$26.28/mo$0.036/hr in us-east-1 (2 vCPUs, 2 GiB); plus gp3 storage from 10 GiB
- gp3 storage $0.122/GB-month
- Automated hourly snapshots kept 14 days, free
- Only on domains without standby
- Searches and records not billed
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Algolia 2026-10-15, Amazon OpenSearch Service 2026-10-15.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- Amazon OpenSearch ServiceSelf-serve sign-up; the highest score of the 2 self-serve products here (7.7/10).
- If you want to try it without entering a card
- AlgoliaFree plan, no card needed; scored 5.8/10.
- Lowest starter price
- Amazon OpenSearch Service$0.036/hour for the t3.small.search (us-east-1) plan. Algolia lists no comparable paid price.
- Highest overall score
- Amazon OpenSearch Service7.7/10 (Good). The review shows the score breakdown and the run behind it.
Picked by fixed rules from the table above, not by hand. How we score
Full reviews
More in Search APIs
Add a product
Search by product name or by what it does, such as “email” or “feature flags”. 2 more fit in this comparison.