Meilisearch
Verified Oct 15, 2026 ActiveOpen-source search engine with vector storage and hybrid keyword-plus-semantic retrieval, self-hosted or run as a cloud service
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- Paid options from
- $20/mo
- Billing
- Monthly
The engine is open source under the MIT licence and free to self-host. Meilisearch Cloud starts at $20/month, usage- or resource-based, with a 14-day trial and no card required; the cost estimator quoted $30/month for 100K documents and 50K searches and $23/month for an XS instance. Enterprise, with up to 99.999% uptime SLA, SSO SAML and SOC 2, is quoted.
Use tool ↗About Meilisearch
Meilisearch is a search engine developed by Meili, a French company registered in Paris. The engine is open source and can be self-hosted; Meilisearch Cloud is the managed version of the same thing. Beyond typo-tolerant keyword search it stores embeddings and runs hybrid retrieval that blends lexical and semantic matching, which is what the RAG positioning rests on: it acts as the retrieval layer feeding an LLM, with context formatting and connectors for LangChain and LlamaIndex. The vendor cites sub-50ms queries across millions of documents. Cloud billing is usage or resource based and enterprise plans add SLAs, SSO and SOC 2.
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 15, 2026
Verified sources
- Pricing page: Cloud starting at $20/month with a 14-day free trial, no credit card; estimator shows $30/month usage-based base plan and $23/month XS instance; Enterprise custom with SLA, SSO SAML, SOC 2 (15 October 2026)meilisearch.com ↗
- Pricing FAQ: Meilisearch is open source under the MIT license and can be self-hosted with no usage limits (15 October 2026)meilisearch.com ↗
Is Meilisearch legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Sep 19, 2018 (8 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar OVH sas, looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Jan 13, 2027Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2018The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- Meili, FranceOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of Meilisearch
Meilisearch is the pragmatic middle between bolting pgvector onto Postgres and running an Elasticsearch cluster: hybrid retrieval works out of the box and the open-source licence means the cloud bill is a convenience, not a lock-in. The limit is scope — it is a retrieval layer, not a full RAG framework, and there is no permanently free cloud tier.
Pros
- Open source engine you can self-host, so the managed service is optional
- Hybrid retrieval blends lexical and vector search in a single query
- Documented integrations with LangChain and LlamaIndex
- Cloud entry at $20/month with usage- or resource-based billing and a card-free 14-day trial
Cons
- No permanently free cloud tier — the free option is self-hosting and running it yourself
- Retrieval only; chunking, prompt assembly and generation stay your problem
- SLAs, SSO SAML and SOC 2 sit behind quoted enterprise plans
Best for
- Teams that want keyword and semantic retrieval from one index instead of two systems
- Products needing typo-tolerant instant search with an escape hatch to self-hosting
- Engineers wiring a retrieval layer under LangChain or LlamaIndex
Not for
- Teams wanting a managed end-to-end RAG pipeline with chunking and generation included
- Projects that need a free hosted tier rather than a 14-day trial
Watch out: The legal terms name Meili SAS in Paris, so cloud contracts are French-law agreements — worth checking against your data-residency requirements.
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Meilisearch head-to-head
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