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 pricing | Algolia pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $20/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 2 | 4 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
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, merchandising, personalization, chat
Free
- 10K search requests/month
- 50K records included
- 5K recommendation requests/month
- 5K crawls/month
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
Popular- 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?
- Different approach here. Meilisearch uses hybrid pricing, while Algolia goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Meilisearch: Sitting comfortably in the mid-tier against Algolia's steeper enterprise-first pricing and open-source alternatives like Elasticsearch that require heavy DevOps investment. Meilisearch is chasing developers who want Algolia-level relevance without the sticker shock, plus teams willing to self-host if they want to skip Cloud entirely. Algolia: Algolia plays in the premium lane — its per-request pricing runs higher than rolling your own with Elasticsearch or opting for a budget tool like Typesense, but that premium buys instant relevance tuning and infrastructure you don't have to manage. They're chasing product teams who value speed-to-implement over squeezing every cent out of infra costs.
Still deciding? See the best Meilisearch alternatives or the best Algolia alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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