by TypesenseSearch APIs
Hosted open-source search on a dedicated cluster billed by the hour, with no limits on records or searches.
A dedicated, managed cluster of open-source search from $21.60 a month, with no per-search or per-record charges.
Typesense Cloud bills for the cluster you run, not for traffic: a fixed hourly fee by RAM and vCPU, plus outbound bandwidth, with no limit on records or searches. That keeps the bill flat as search volume grows. Vector and hybrid search, built-in embedding models, conversational search and SAML SSO are included on every account, and the engine is open source, so you can move to your own servers.
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Search APIs: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Typesense Cloud | Elastic Cloud | Amazon OpenSearch Service | Meilisearch Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Worth the priceA dedicated, managed cluster of open-source search from $21.60 a month, with no per-search or per-record charges. | 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. | 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 | 7.6 | 8.0Best | 7.7 | 6.2 |
| Free option | Free trial | 14-day free trial | Free trial | 14-day free trial |
| Card to start | –Not measured | No card needed | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $21.60/mo | $0.0282/hour | $0.036/hour | $20/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | Cluster hours (RAM and vCPU) and outbound bandwidth | RAM-hours, data transfer and snapshot storage (Hosted); compute units and storage (Serverless) | Instance hours, EBS storage and data transfer; or compute units and storage (Serverless) | Instance hours, disk and bandwidth; or searches and documents |
| Free option | 720 cluster hours and 10 GB once per account | 14-day trial, no card | AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, not specific to OpenSearch | 14-day trial, no card |
| 100,000 records, 500,000 searches/mo | $21.60 (0.5 GB, one node); $64.80 with high availability | $20.59 (Hosted, 1 GB, one zone); $41.17 in two zones | $27.50 (t3.small.search, one node) | $23 (XS, estimator); $210 usage-based |
| Vector or hybrid search | Every cluster | Every level; semantic models and reranking on Serverless and higher Hosted levels | Every domain (k-NN, neural and hybrid search) | Documented for the engine, no plan limit stated |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II (report with Business support) | Both | Both (AWS reports in AWS Artifact) | SOC 2 Type II |
| HIPAA BAA | With the Business support plan ($400 per 28 days) | Every subscription tier | Self-serve in AWS Artifact | Not stated |
| EU hosting | Yes, 6 EU locations incl. Frankfurt and Paris, same price as the US | Yes, incl. Frankfurt and Ireland on AWS, Azure and GCP | Yes, AWS EU Regions incl. Frankfurt, Ireland and Paris | Yes, Frankfurt and Paris |
| SAML SSO | Every account, no extra charge | Serverless, no extra cost; Hosted on Enterprise | IAM Identity Center at no extra charge; SAML for OpenSearch Dashboards | Enterprise |
| Open-source engine | Yes, GPL-3.0 | Yes, AGPLv3 option (also SSPL and Elastic License) | Yes, OpenSearch (Apache 2.0) | Yes, MIT (Enterprise Edition parts under BUSL) |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Typesense Cloud is the cheapest here at our scenario and includes the most on a self-serve plan: vector search, SAML SSO and an open-source engine. You size the cluster, and compliance documents need a support plan. | 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, 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: Typesense Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Elastic Cloud: 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; 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.
Review from public pages
Written from Typesense Cloud's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 15, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
We read Typesense Cloud's pricing configurator, support plans, security page and help center, and the Typesense docs, on Oct 15, 2026; we did not sign up for this review. Pricing is a configurator rather than a plan table: you choose RAM (0.5 GB to 1,024 GB), vCPUs, the number of nodes for high availability, and options such as a search delivery network or GPU acceleration, and it shows an hourly fee. The smallest configuration, 0.5 GB with 2 burstable vCPUs on one node, is $0.03 an hour or $21.60 a month in every region we checked, plus $0.09 per GB of outbound bandwidth.
Sizing is your job, with help. The configuration assistant on the pricing page recommends 0.5 GB for 100,000 records of 1 KB of indexed fields, in line with the docs' rule of two to three times the size of the searchable fields. The page recommends high availability for production; three nodes of 0.5 GB cost $64.80 a month.
The free tier is 720 cluster hours and 10 GB of bandwidth, once per account, on select configurations. The help center says the SOC 2 Type II report and a HIPAA BAA are available to customers who intend to buy the Business support plan or above.
Searches and records are not billed; you pay for cluster hours and bandwidth.
vs Algolia: Algolia charges $0.50 per 1,000 search requests on Grow; usage-based Meilisearch charges $0.40 per 1,000 searches.
$21.60 a month for a 0.5 GB single-node cluster, the size the configuration assistant recommends for 100,000 records of 1 KB.
vs Meilisearch Cloud: Meilisearch Cloud’s estimator shows $23; Algolia comes to $245 at listed rates.
The security page offers SAML SSO with providers such as Okta and Azure AD, plus GitHub login, 2FA and role-based access control.
vs Meilisearch Cloud: Algolia and Meilisearch Cloud list SSO on their enterprise plans only.
Vector and hybrid search, built-in embedding models, image search and a conversational search (RAG) API are documented for the engine.
Typesense Server is GPL-3.0, and the API exports schemas, documents, synonyms and curation rules.
The bill depends on the RAM and vCPU you pick; the docs size RAM at two to three times the searchable data, and built-in embedding models need 2 to 6 GB more.
Workaround: The pricing page has a configuration assistant, and Typesense offers help choosing a configuration.
The pricing page recommends high availability for production; three 0.5 GB nodes cost $64.80 a month instead of $21.60.
The SOC 2 report, penetration test summary and HIPAA BAA are for customers intending to buy Business support ($400 per 28 days) or above.
720 cluster hours and 10 GB of bandwidth are granted once per account, on select configurations.
Typesense Cloud bills a fixed hourly fee for the cluster configuration, outbound bandwidth ($0.09 per GB on the configurator; the help center says 9 to 12 cents depending on region) and optional support plans. Charges go to a card weekly; monthly billing is available after three months of on-time payments.
For 100,000 records and 500,000 searches a month, the configuration assistant recommends 0.5 GB of RAM: $0.03 × 720 hours = $21.60 a month on one node, or $64.80 with three nodes for high availability. Bandwidth depends on result size: 5 GB of responses would add $0.45. The SOC 2 report and BAA come with Business support, $400 per 28 days.
The help center says Typesense is meant as a secondary data store synced from your primary database, and the API exports collection schemas, documents, synonyms, curation rules and stop words. The engine is open source (GPL-3.0), so the same API can run on your own servers.
From its public pages, Typesense Cloud is the cheapest here at our scenario and includes the most on a self-serve plan: vector search, SAML SSO and an open-source engine. You size the cluster, and compliance documents need a support plan.
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Billing units | Cluster hours (RAM and vCPU) and outbound bandwidth |
| Free option | 720 cluster hours and 10 GB once per account |
| 100,000 records, 500,000 searches/mo | $21.60 (0.5 GB, one node); $64.80 with high availability |
| Vector or hybrid search | Every cluster |
| SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II (report with Business support) |
| HIPAA BAA | With the Business support plan ($400 per 28 days) |
| EU hosting | Yes, 6 EU locations incl. Frankfurt and Paris, same price as the US |
| SAML SSO | Every account, no extra charge |
| Open-source engine | Yes, GPL-3.0 |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 15, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Typesense Cloud yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 15, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Typesense Cloud yet.
Typesense Cloud lists 5 plans. The cheapest paid plan, 0.5 GB RAM cluster, costs $21.60/mo.
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-15.
Source: cloud.typesense.org pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.
We read the pricing, security and docs pages of three hosted search APIs on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. How each one bills, what 100,000 records and 500,000 searches a month cost, and who should pick which.
