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 pageMeilisearch vs Qdrant
Our take
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. Pick Qdrant if rAG teams who will run OSS or Cloud Free for $0 (1 GB / 4 GB, ~1M × 768-d vectors) and only open Standard when they need dedicated RAM and a 99.5% SLA.
Best for
Meilisearch Search you start at MIT $0 or Cloud from $20
Qdrant Store and search embeddings you already made
Free plan
Meilisearch $0 · mIT license. No usage cap on the engine. You run the binary
Qdrant $0 · you host Docker / Kubernetes / Edge
Lowest paid
Meilisearch Not published by the vendor
Qdrant Cloud Standard $85/mo
Runs where
Meilisearch Local; you host it
Qdrant
Watch out
Meilisearch The hero says $20
Qdrant Free Cloud suspends after 1 idle week
Last checked
Meilisearch 2026-10-22 · meilisearch.com/pricing
Qdrant 2026-10-22 · qdrant.tech/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Qdrant if
rAG teams who will run OSS or Cloud Free for $0 (1 GB / 4 GB, ~1M × 768-d vectors) and only open Standard when they need dedicated RAM and a 99.5% SLA.
Read the Qdrant page