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Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs Solr comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Solr
Ranking in Search as a Service
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 8.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 6.4%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

AmrIssa - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and fully managed search service with diverse data type support and robust security
We use it as our hosting solution, serving as the backbone for our systems, which include Rubrik and SAP It is remarkably efficient and beneficial. A reboot should be enhanced. There are issues with the VBC collection. I have been working with it for four years. I would rate the stability ten…
reviewer1368636 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good indexing and decent stability, but requires more documentation
The solution's grammar and syntax should be easier. It does take a little bit of effort to use and understand the solution. It would help us a lot if the solution offered up more documentation or tutorials to help with training or troubleshooting. MongoDB can realize more complex operations than Solr can. Solr should add some more complex operations to the database to at least bring it up to MondoDB's level of functionality. It would make it more competitive. There might be some compatibility issues between the data types within Solr. This needs to be improved. Solr has a schema that we have to load the schema as an HTML, or SML file. This usually needs to be done by our engineers. It should be easier to do without needing too much technical background.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is the cloud aspect. I do not need to have the physical infrastructure, everything is in the cloud."
"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."
"It is remarkably efficient and beneficial."
"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"It's the best solution for any company. It has a hosting ERP system for any task. AWS is stable. AWS is more flexible and its elastic concept is a new concept. AWS is also very secure. It has many layers of security, like hardware security and software security. This is a big issue."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is its ability to receive data quickly. You can access your data easily in a short time."
"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
"One of the best aspects of the solution is the indexing. It's already indexed to all the fields in the category. We don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing. It's great."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
"​Sharding data, Faceting, Hit Highlighting, parent-child Block Join and Grouping, and multi-mode platform are all valuable features."
 

Cons

"AWS CloudSearch's documentation isn't very clear. Also, the on-premise version of the solution is less stable than the cloud version."
"Security is a concern but they're working on it."
"Latlon data type only supports single value per document. All other types support multiple values. We faced issues with this because we had scenarios where, for each document, we needed to store multiple latlon values for different geographical locations."
"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."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."
"The solution should improve the recovery aspects that it has on offer."
"A reboot should be enhanced."
"I do not have any suggestions for improvements at this time."
"Encountered issues with both master-slave and SolrCloud. Indexing and serving traffic from same collection has very poor performance. Some components are slow for searching."
"With increased sharding, performance degrades. Merger, when present, is a bottle-neck. Peer-to-peer sync has issues in SolrCloud when index is incrementally updated."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
"It does take a little bit of effort to use and understand the solution. It would help us a lot if the solution offered up more documentation or tutorials to help with training or troubleshooting."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"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."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"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."
"The only costs in addition to the standard licensing fees are related to the hardware, depending on whether it is cloud-based, or on-premise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon AWS CloudSearch?
In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable. I would rate it eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Amazon AWS CloudSearch?
A reboot should be enhanced. There are issues with the VBC collection.
Ask a question
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Sample Customers

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eHarmony, Sears, StubHub, Best Buy, Instagram, Netflix, Disney, AT&T, eBay, AOL, Bloomberg, Comcast, Ticketmaster, Travelocity, MTV Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Solr and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.