Pick Algolia if
search / ecommerce teams who will stay on Free (10K search requests, 50K records) while they open a first Visual Editor pin, then pay Grow at $0.50 / 1K requests after 10K (records $0.40 / 1K after 100K).
Read the Algolia pageAlgolia vs Meilisearch
Our take
Pick Algolia if search / ecommerce teams who will stay on Free (10K search requests, 50K records) while they open a first Visual Editor pin, then pay Grow at $0.50 / 1K requests after 10K (records $0.40 / 1K after 100K). Pick Meilisearch if app teams who will stay on MIT self-host $0 while they index a first catalog, then start the 14-day Cloud trial (no card) and land on Cloud from $20/month when they do not want
Best for
Algolia Records you merchandise inside a $0 start
Meilisearch Search you start at MIT $0 or Cloud from $20
Free plan
Algolia $0 · no card. 10K search requests / month. 50K records. 5K recommendation requests / month. 5K crawls / month
Meilisearch $0 · mIT license. No usage cap on the engine. You run the binary
Lowest paid
Algolia Crawler overage $0.80
Meilisearch Not published by the vendor
Runs where
Algolia Local or hosted
Meilisearch Local; you host it
Watch out
Algolia Free caps at 10K requests and 50K records
Meilisearch The hero says $20
Last checked
Algolia 2026-10-23 · algolia.com/pricing
Meilisearch 2026-10-22 · meilisearch.com/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Meilisearch if
app teams who will stay on MIT self-host $0 while they index a first catalog, then start the 14-day Cloud trial (no card) and land on Cloud from $20/month when they do not want to run the engine.
Read the Meilisearch page