Meilisearch vs Algolia Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Meilisearch | Algolia | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $20/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 2 | 4 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Cloud
- 14-day free trial, no credit card required
- Usage-based or resource-based billing
- Fully managed Cloud infrastructure
- Scale seamlessly from prototype to production
- Email support included
Enterprise
- Custom infra and dedicated resources
- Up to 99.999% uptime SLA
- Dedicated Slack support channel
- SSO SAML and SOC 2 compliance
- Enterprise-grade compliance
- Analytics, Merchandizing, Personalisation, Chat
Build
- 10K search requests/month
- 50K records included
- 5K AI Recommendation requests/month
- 5K crawls/month
- 1 Generative Experience Guide included
Grow
- Keyword Search + Browse
- Query suggestions
- Rules: 10/index
- Manual synonyms
- Data transformation
- 30 days analytics retention
- Third party integrations + connectors
- US, UK, EU hosting locations
Grow Plus
- Rules: 10,000/index
- AI Synonyms
- AI Ranking
- Advanced Personalization
- Query Categorization
- Collections
- 90 days analytics retention
Elevate
- NeuralSearch
- AI Collections
- Smart Groups
- Real-time personalization
- 99.99% availability
- Access to SSO and enhanced SLA
- Access to enterprise-level Support plans
- Professional services available
Meilisearch vs Algolia FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Algolia has a free plan. Meilisearch doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Meilisearch: They're positioned as the developer-friendly, open-source-backed alternative to Algolia — meaningfully cheaper at the low end, with a self-hostable option that gives budget-conscious teams an escape valve. They're not chasing Elasticsearch's enterprise complexity; they're going after teams who want fast, clean search without the Algolia sticker shock. Algolia: Algolia sits at the premium end of the search-as-a-service market — they're not trying to win on price against open-source alternatives like Meilisearch or Typesense. The custom pricing across three paid tiers signals they're targeting mid-market and enterprise teams where search is a core product feature, not an afterthought.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Meilisearch and Algolia and let you know when something moves.