Our take
Pick Elasticsearch if search / logs teams who will self-host Basic at $0 — or take Cloud Hosted Standard from $99/month (120 GB / 2 zones) — while they open a first Discover, then Gold $114 only when they need reporting and Watcher. Pick Typesense if teams who will stay on the GPL self-host at $0 while they open a first Collection Search, then buy a Typesense Cloud cluster when they do not want to operate the binary
open-source search engine
Best for
Elasticsearch A Discover table you start at a printed $
Typesense Typed search you start at $0 on your host (or a Typesense Cloud cluster)
Free plan
Elasticsearch No free plan
Typesense $0 · gPL-3.0. You run the Typesense binary. Confirmed by the GitHub license key gpl-3.0
Lowest paid
Elasticsearch Synthetics (footnote) $0.0123/mo
Typesense Not published by the vendor
Next step up
Elasticsearch Cloud Hosted Standard $99/mo
Typesense
Runs where
Elasticsearch Hosted
Typesense Local; you host it
Watch out
Elasticsearch $99 is “as low as” for 120 GB / 2 zones
Typesense $0 is the license, not the Cloud cluster
Last checked
Elasticsearch 2026-10-23 · elastic.co/pricing/cloud-hosted
Typesense 2026-10-23 · cloud.typesense.org/pricing
search / logs teams who will self-host Basic at $0 — or take Cloud Hosted Standard from $99/month (120 GB / 2 zones) — while they open a first Discover, then Gold $114 only when they need reporting and Watcher.
Read the Elasticsearch pageteams who will stay on the GPL self-host at $0 while they open a first Collection Search, then buy a Typesense Cloud cluster when they do not want to operate the binary — and will confirm the cluster $ at checkout because the marketing pricing page does not print it.
Read the Typesense page