Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Azure AI Search comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Search as a Service category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #8, while Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.4% mindshare in SS, compared to Microsoft’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Read 12 Amazon AWS CloudSearch reviews

671 Views
671 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Azure AI Search

Read 9 Azure AI Search reviews

1,110 Views
1,110 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Azure AI Search

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon AWS CloudSearch and Azure AI Search based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Search as a Service solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Azure AI Search Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Azure AI Search

December 2025

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Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Ranking in Search as a Service

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Azure AI Search

Ranking in Search as a Service

4th

Average Rating

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 5.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure AI Search is 9.0%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure AI Search	9.0%
Amazon AWS CloudSearch	5.4%
Other	85.6%

Search as a Service

Featured Reviews

HarishMahanta

Sr PeopleSoft Consultant at People Tech

A reasonably priced solution that provides scalability, stability, reliability, and security

In terms of what needs improvement, I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds. Let's say we have various clouds in the market, like Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and AWS Cloud. However, security-wise, I don't think AWS is bad. It's good only, especially in comparison to Oracle Cloud, if you really use Oracle, while also considering the fact that PeopleSoft is an Oracle product. AWS is a separate cloud, and Oracle has its own cloud. If you are in a new PeopleSoft and Oracle and you are using a third-party cloud, it means it is not easy since we can't think it is easy. I mean, if you are using Oracle products and you are using Oracle Cloud, it will be easier for you. However, it has a cost in comparison to AWS. Oracle Cloud is too costly. According to region, we segregate because it depends on the organization's strength. Let's say your organization has 1,000 customers. In that case, on a daily basis, let's say one customer was released or discontinued using the product. Then, you have to remove the solution. However, if you use Oracle Cloud, that space will remain there. In the case of AWS, they will immediately cut down their space, meaning in terms of reuse ability, it will reduce the cost. In our case, AWS is the best in the market, actually. We have various clouds like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure Cloud, the features of which are very different. There are a lot of features in AWS Cloud since I am not in the market providing service on the products. I am just using that tool to access our clients' database and deliver our day-to-day service. I interact with the clients regarding their issues, whatever they are facing. There is this one kind of interface we use to access things because they are in AWS Cloud. If your customer is in Oracle Cloud, then there will be a different approach to accessing it. In our case, we can use AWS or Oracle, so it doesn't matter to us.

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Prabakaran SP

Software Architect at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees

Automated indexing has streamlined document search workflows but semantic relevance and setup complexity still need improvement

We used the semantic search capabilities of Azure AI Search, but we haven't gotten good results in the semantic search. So we are exploring with ChromaDB, and Cosmos is having the capability of doing the semantic search as well. We are exploring that. A few queries we use analytics search, which works and is good. Analytics search is good. We are trying the ML capabilities of the product since we are using Databricks and other tools for building the models, MLflow, and related items. We are still working on proof of concepts, which could be better with ChromaDB or Cosmos or vector search or inbuilt Databricks vector stores. Language processing is not about user intention; it's about the context. If there is a document and you want to know the context of a particular section, then we would use vector search. Instead of traversing through the whole document, while chunking it into the vector, we'll categorize and chunk, and then we'll look only at those chunks to do a semantic search. When comparing Azure AI Search, I'm doing a proof of concept because with ChromaDB I can create instances using LangChain anywhere. For per session, I can create one ChromaDB and can remove it, which is really useful for proof of concepts. Instead of creating an Azure AI Search instance and doing that there, that is one advantage I'm seeing for the proof of concept alone, not for the entire product. I hope it should support all the embedding providers as well. Is there a viewer or tool similar to Storage Explorer? We are basically SQL-centric people, so we used to find Cosmos DB very quick for us when we search something and create indexes. I guess there is some limitation in Azure AI Search. I couldn't remember now, such as querying limitations. I'm not remembering that part.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is remarkably efficient and beneficial."

"The quality of the solution is good."

"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."

"The best feature is its scalability in that Cloud is always on the fly."

"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"AWS CloudSearch's best features are good performance under high CPU and memory use, and ease of deployment and scaling."

"CDN service reduces latency when accessing our web application."

More Amazon AWS CloudSearch pros

"Creates indexers to get data from different data sources."

"Because all communication is done via the REST API, data is retrieved quickly in JSON format to reduce overhead and latency."

"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."

"The customer engagement was good."

"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."

"The amount of flexibility and agility is really assuring."

"The search functionality time has been reduced to a few milliseconds."

"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."

More Azure AI Search pros

Cons

"Security is a concern but they're working on it."

"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."

"A reboot should be enhanced."

"The price of the solution can be expensive."

"We'd like to see more database features."

"The solution should improve the recovery aspects that it has on offer."

"Index cleanup is sometimes painful. No easy way to clean indexes or a bulk of documents. Full indexing or regeneration of entire indexes sometimes gets stuck. In one instance, we had to delete the entire index and re-create it."

"Regarding the period of propagation on CDN servers, sometimes we update photos or files and we don't see the update instantly. We need to wait for sometime."

More Amazon AWS CloudSearch cons

"For SDKs, Azure Search currently offers solutions for .NET and Python. Additional platforms would be welcomed, especially native iOS and Android solutions for mobile development."

"The after-hour services are slow."

"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."

"The pricing is room for improvement."

"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."

"The solution's stability could be better."

"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product."

"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."

More Azure AI Search cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one point is cheap, and ten points are expensive, I rate the pricing as medium or reasonable."

"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."

"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."

"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."

"Amazon AWS CloudSearch charging is based on how many resources you consume or and the solution is known to be a bit expensive."

"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."

"There was no license needed to use this solution."

"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details."

"The solution is affordable."

"When telling people about the product, I always encourage them to set up a new service using the free pricing tier. This allows them to learn about the product and its capabilities in a risk-free environment. Depending on their needs, the free tier may be suitable for their projects, however enterprise applications will most likely required a higher, paid tier."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."

"The cost is comparable."

"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."

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881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What needs improvement with Azure Search?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Azure Search?

Our use case for Azure AI Search is that we earlier thought to build a vector search and used to have the vector search query in Azure AI Search. Earlier, when it was a search service, we used to l...

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What advice do you have for others considering Azure Search?

I can answer a few questions about Azure AI Search to share my opinion. I am still working with Azure and using Azure solutions. We haven't used Cognitive Skills in Azure AI Search. We also got a d...

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Comparisons

Elastic Search vs Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Compared 21% of the time

Algolia vs Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Compared 18% of the time

Solr vs Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon Kendra vs Amazon AWS CloudSearch

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon AWS CloudSearch Competitors

Elastic Search vs Azure AI Search

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon Kendra vs Azure AI Search

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Azure AI Search

Compared 15% of the time

Algolia vs Azure AI Search

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Athena vs Azure AI Search

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure AI Search Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS CloudSearch

January 2026

Download Amazon AWS CloudSearch product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure AI Search

January 2026

Download Azure AI Search product report

Overview

Amazon CloudSearch is a managed service in the AWS Cloud that makes it simple and cost-effective to set up, manage, and scale a search solution for your website or application.
Amazon CloudSearch supports 34 languages and popular search features such as highlighting, autocomplete, and geospatial search. With Amazon CloudSearch, you can quickly add rich search capabilities to your website or application. You don't need to become a search expert or worry about hardware provisioning, setup, and maintenance. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can create a search domain and upload the data that you want to make searchable, and Amazon CloudSearch will automatically provision the required resources and deploy a highly tuned search index.

You can easily change your search parameters, fine tune search relevance, and apply new settings at any time. As your volume of data and traffic fluctuates, Amazon CloudSearch seamlessly scales to meet your needs.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure Search is a search-as-a-service cloud solution that gives developers APIs and tools for adding a rich search experience over your data in web, mobile, and enterprise applications. Functionality is exposed through a simple REST API or .NET SDK that masks the inherent complexity of search technology. In addition to APIs, the Azure portal provides administration and prototyping support. Infrastructure and availability are managed by Microsoft.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

SmugMug

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Azure AI Search

December 2025

Free Report: Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Azure AI Search

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