#1 in Vector & RetrievalUpdated 2026-08

Meilisearch

by Meilisearch · Open-source search engine with full-text, semantic and hybrid retrieval

78.8 — BenchRank score out of 100

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Pricing page

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Overview

Meilisearch is a search engine that indexes documents through an API and returns results as you type. It covers full-text, semantic, hybrid and multimodal search, with filtering, faceting, sorting, geosearch, federated search and vector storage for RAG. It is open source and can be self-hosted, or run on Meilisearch Cloud as managed infrastructure.

Best for: Development teams adding full-text, semantic or hybrid search to an app, self-hosted or managed
Pricing: Self-hosting is free; Meilisearch Cloud starts at $20/month after a 14-day trial, and Enterprise is priced on request.
Runs on: Self-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

Open source; self-hosting is free with full infrastructure control
Full-text, semantic, hybrid and multimodal search in one engine
SDKs for 10+ languages plus React, Vue, Angular and Rails
SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR listed

Trade-offs

Personalisation, analytics and SSO SAML are Enterprise-only, priced on request
Self-hosting is free but you manage updates, backups and scaling yourself
No free Cloud tier beyond a 14-day trial
Cloud cost varies with document count, searches and instance size

Pricing

Published plans from Meilisearch’s own pricing page, in USD. Usage charges and add-ons may apply on top.

Meilisearch pricing tiers, monthly rates in USD
Plan	Monthly	Includes
Cloud	$20	14-day free trial, no credit card required Usage-based or resource-based billing Fully managed Cloud infrastructure Email support included
Enterprise	Contact sales	Custom infrastructure and dedicated resources Up to 99.999% uptime SLA Dedicated Slack channel, SSO SAML, SOC 2 Analytics, merchandising, personalisation, chat

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

MCP support: 60 out of 100
API quality: 40 out of 100
Documentation: 100 out of 100
Agent friendliness: 98 out of 100
Pricing transparency: 100 out of 100
Changelog: 100 out of 100
Marketing site structure: 70 out of 100
Operational trust: 100 out of 100

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

Openness: 55 out of 100
Maintenance: 100 out of 100

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