Search APIs · Comparison
Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Meilisearch Cloud
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 | Amazon OpenSearch Service | Meilisearch Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | 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. | Easy to adoptHosted open-source search with a choice of billing: pay per search and document, or a fixed instance price from about $20 a month. |
| Overall score | 7.7Best | 6.2 |
| Free option | Free trial | 14-day free trial |
| Card to start | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $0.036/hour | $20/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | Instance hours, EBS storage and data transfer; or compute units and storage (Serverless) | Instance hours, disk and bandwidth; or searches and documents |
| Free option | AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, not specific to OpenSearch | 14-day trial, no card |
| 100,000 records, 500,000 searches/mo | $27.50 (t3.small.search, one node) | $23 (XS, estimator); $210 usage-based |
| Vector or hybrid search | Every domain (k-NN, neural and hybrid search) | Documented for the engine, no plan limit stated |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Both (AWS reports in AWS Artifact) | SOC 2 Type II |
| HIPAA BAA | Self-serve in AWS Artifact | Not stated |
| EU hosting | Yes, AWS EU Regions incl. Frankfurt, Ireland and Paris | Yes, Frankfurt and Paris |
| SAML SSO | IAM Identity Center at no extra charge; SAML for OpenSearch Dashboards | Enterprise |
| Open-source engine | Yes, OpenSearch (Apache 2.0) | Yes, MIT (Enterprise Edition parts under BUSL) |
| Bottom line | 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. | From its public pages, Meilisearch Cloud gives the most billing flexibility here and a low resource-based price at our scenario. Check the instance size against the docs’ tier table, and plan on Enterprise for SSO. |
Evidence: Amazon OpenSearch Service: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Meilisearch Cloud: 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.
- 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
- Meilisearch CloudLowest priceXS (resource-based)$17.73/mo0.5 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, Frankfurt; plus disk (32 GB minimum) and $0.15/GB bandwidth
- Billed hourly, regardless of searches or documents
- Listed in the docs for development and testing
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Amazon OpenSearch Service 2026-10-15, Meilisearch Cloud 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
- Meilisearch Cloud14-day free trial, no card needed; scored 6.2/10.
- Lowest starter price
- Meilisearch Cloud$20/mo for the Cloud plan.
- 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.