{"head":{"title":"Search API Pricing Compared: Algolia and Meilisearch","description":"Hosted search prices from Algolia and Meilisearch Cloud: plans, included searches and the price per 1,000 searches, each read off the vendor's own page.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/pricing/categories/search-api"},"asOf":"2026-10-25","category":"search-api","vendors":[{"id":"algolia","name":"Algolia","product":"Algolia search API","categories":["search-api"],"source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"Pay-as-you-go monthly plans, USD. Elevate is annual and custom priced.","plans":[{"id":"free","name":"Free","monthly":0,"summary":"10K search requests/month, 50K records, no credit card.","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"grow","name":"Grow","monthly":0,"summary":"Keyword search. $0 base, usage billed beyond included amounts.","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"grow-plus","name":"Grow Plus","monthly":0,"summary":"Keyword search with AI features. $0 base, usage billed.","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"elevate","name":"Elevate","monthly":null,"summary":"Annual plan, enterprise AI search, custom volume-based pricing.","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"}],"meters":[{"id":"search-grow","kind":"search-request","label":"Search requests, Grow","unit":"request","per":1000,"price":0.5,"included":10000,"plan":"grow","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"records-grow","kind":"other","label":"Records beyond included, Grow","unit":"record","per":1000,"price":0.4,"included":100000,"plan":"grow","note":"Page does not say if this is per month.","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"search-growplus","kind":"search-request","label":"Search requests, Grow Plus","unit":"request","per":1000,"price":1.75,"included":10000,"plan":"grow-plus","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"},{"id":"records-growplus","kind":"other","label":"Records beyond included, Grow Plus","unit":"record","per":1000,"price":0.4,"included":100000,"plan":"grow-plus","source":"https://www.algolia.com/pricing/"}],"notes":[{"title":"Free start","detail":"Grow and Grow Plus start at $0/month. You pay only beyond 10K searches and 100K records."},{"title":"Search price by plan","detail":"Extra searches cost $0.50 per 1K on Grow and $1.75 per 1K on Grow Plus."},{"title":"Elevate","detail":"Elevate is an annual plan with custom, volume-based pricing."}],"unverified":["Elevate prices not published."]},{"id":"meilisearch","name":"Meilisearch","product":"Meilisearch Cloud","categories":["search-api"],"source":"https://www.meilisearch.com/pricing","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"Meilisearch Cloud, USD. Only the starting price and the estimator default are published in page text.","plans":[{"id":"cloud","name":"Cloud","monthly":20,"summary":"Starting price. Usage-based or resource-based billing, 14-day free trial.","source":"https://www.meilisearch.com/pricing"},{"id":"enterprise","name":"Enterprise","monthly":null,"summary":"Custom; dedicated support and SLAs.","source":"https://www.meilisearch.com/pricing"}],"meters":[],"notes":[{"title":"Two billing models","detail":"Cloud bills either by usage or by resources (instance size plus disk)."},{"title":"Estimator example","detail":"The estimator's default shows a usage-based base plan of $30/mo for 100K docs and 50K searches, or an XS instance at $18/mo plus disk."},{"title":"Self-host free","detail":"Meilisearch is open source (MIT) and free to self-host."}],"unverified":["Per-search overage price on usage-based Cloud not shown in page text."]}],"vendorPages":["aws","azure","cloudflare","digitalocean","firebase","fly-io","google-cloud","mongodb-atlas","neon","netlify","planetscale","render","supabase","vercel","algolia","google-maps","mapbox","paddle","plaid","postmark","resend","sendgrid","stripe","twilio"],"leftOut":[{"id":"typesense","name":"Typesense","categories":["search-api"],"source":"https://cloud.typesense.org/pricing","why":"Prices are computed by JavaScript from a configurator; no price text in the fetched HTML. No price recorded."}],"siblings":[{"label":"CDN pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cdn","detail":"Priced on 1 TB of CDN traffic and 10M requests a month."},{"label":"Cloud hosting pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cloud-hosting","detail":"Priced on one 2 vCPU / 4 GB server running all month, with 200 GB of egress."},{"label":"Database pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/databases","detail":"Priced on the smallest paid always-on database with 20 GB of storage."},{"label":"Edge functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/edge-functions","detail":"Priced on 20M edge function requests a month."},{"label":"Object storage pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/object-storage","detail":"Priced on 500 GB stored, 1 TB downloaded and 1M writes a month."},{"label":"Serverless functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/serverless","detail":"Priced on 10M invocations and 1M GB-seconds a month."},{"label":"Product analytics pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/analytics","detail":"Priced on 5M events a month."},{"label":"Auth pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/auth","detail":"Priced on 20,000 monthly active users."},{"label":"Banking data API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/banking-data","detail":"Priced on 500 verified bank accounts a month."},{"label":"Email API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/email-api","detail":"Priced on 100,000 emails a month."},{"label":"Error monitoring pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/error-monitoring","detail":"Priced on 100,000 errors a month."},{"label":"KYC and identity verification pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/kyc-identity","detail":"Priced on 500 identity verifications a month."},{"label":"Maps API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/maps","detail":"Priced on 100,000 web map loads and 50,000 geocodes a month."},{"label":"Observability pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/observability","detail":"Priced on 10 hosts and 200 GB of logs a month."},{"label":"Payments pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/payments","detail":"Priced on 1,000 card payments of $50 a month."},{"label":"SMS API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/sms","detail":"Priced on 10,000 SMS to US numbers a month."}],"faqs":[{"question":"Which search API vendor is cheapest?","answer":"Only Algolia publishes enough rates to price 100,000 searches a month: about $45.00 a month on list prices, checked 2026-10-25. The others need a quote."},{"question":"How is the estimate worked out?","answer":"Each vendor is priced on its cheapest plan that lists a rate for every line of the workload: the plan fee plus each usage line, after any free or included amount. A plan's monthly minimum counts as a floor. Volume tiers are applied in order. Taxes, discounts and committed-use deals are left out."},{"question":"Why are some vendors missing a price?","answer":"Meilisearch does not publish a rate for this workload on the pricing page, so the table says so instead of guessing. We could not read the pricing page of Typesense on 2026-10-25, so it is left out."},{"question":"How current are these prices?","answer":"Every rate was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-10-25 and links to it. Prices change often: check the vendor's page before you commit, and tell us if a number here is out of date."}]}