Search APIs · Comparison
Elastic Cloud 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 | Elastic Cloud | Meilisearch Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Saves engineering timeManaged Elasticsearch with vector, semantic and hybrid search from $0.0282 an hour, with SOC 2, ISO 27001 and a HIPAA BAA on every tier. | 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 | 8.0Best | 6.2 |
| Free option | 14-day free trial | 14-day free trial |
| Card to start | No card needed | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $0.0282/hour | $20/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | RAM-hours, data transfer and snapshot storage (Hosted); compute units and storage (Serverless) | Instance hours, disk and bandwidth; or searches and documents |
| Free option | 14-day trial, no card | 14-day trial, no card |
| 100,000 records, 500,000 searches/mo | $20.59 (Hosted, 1 GB, one zone); $41.17 in two zones | $23 (XS, estimator); $210 usage-based |
| Vector or hybrid search | Every level; semantic models and reranking on Serverless and higher Hosted levels | Documented for the engine, no plan limit stated |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | Both | SOC 2 Type II |
| HIPAA BAA | Every subscription tier | Not stated |
| EU hosting | Yes, incl. Frankfurt and Ireland on AWS, Azure and GCP | Yes, Frankfurt and Paris |
| SAML SSO | Serverless, no extra cost; Hosted on Enterprise | Enterprise |
| Open-source engine | Yes, AGPLv3 option (also SSPL and Elastic License) | Yes, MIT (Enterprise Edition parts under BUSL) |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Elastic Cloud offers the most AI search and compliance here on self-serve terms and the lowest Hosted price at our scenario. Pricing has more settings than the others, and SSO and some AI features depend on the Hosted level or on using Serverless. | 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: Elastic Cloud: 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.
- Elastic CloudHosted Standard$0.0282/GB RAM-hourGeneral purpose (ARM), AWS us-east-1; 1 GB in one zone is $20.59/mo
- Kibana and Integrations Server at 1 GB shown as free
- Data transfer: 100 GB/mo free, then $0.05/GB out
- Vector data storage and retrieval
- Limited support, web-based
- Meilisearch CloudXS (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: Elastic Cloud 2026-10-15, Meilisearch Cloud 2026-10-15.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- Elastic CloudSelf-serve sign-up, no card needed; the highest score of the 2 self-serve products here (8.0/10).
- If you want to try it without entering a card
- Elastic Cloud14-day free trial, no card needed, and the highest score of the 2 that skip the card (8.0/10).
- Lowest starter price
- Meilisearch Cloud$20/mo for the Cloud plan. Elastic Cloud lists no comparable paid price.
- Highest overall score
- Elastic Cloud8.0/10 (Excellent). 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
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