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Azure AI Search vs Elastic Search 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

Azure AI Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (5th), Vector Databases (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 10.3%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 17.2%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search17.2%
Azure AI Search10.3%
Other72.5%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Prabakaran SP - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2817942 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Logging and vector search have transformed observability and empowered reliable ai agents
Elastic Search is not specifically being used for certain purposes. I deploy Elastic Search database on the cloud and use cloud services so that nobody can attack. However, I do not use Elastic Search to resolve attack issues. The basic main purpose of Elastic Search, as of now, I feel it can do more in the AI area. Sometime I saw that when I am developing RAG and have to generate the embeddings, which I call metadata, sometimes it tries to fail. That durability or issue handling should be improved, but apart from that, I did not find anything as of now. As per my use case, whatever I am using seems pretty good. Apart from that, some definitely improvement will be there. One improvement is that it should be faster. Whenever I am searching any logs, it takes much time. For example, if I open my log in Notepad or a similar tool, I can search the text within a second. With Elastic Search, it takes a little bit of time, ten to fifteen seconds. That can be improved. Sometimes, engineers take time to assign when I create a ticket.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure AI Search has impacted my organization positively with overall time saving and low costs as the main outputs that we get after using it."
"The broad access capability is probably the most valuable feature, as it provides access with hardly any physical infrastructure."
"Usually, that search functionality used to take around 10 secs to search data, and that time has been reduced to a few milliseconds now."
"The amount of flexibility and agility is really assuring."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."
"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."
"The product is pretty resilient."
"We have many advantages from the features of Elasticsearch, and we have enough possibilities and features with Elasticsearch for our business requirements."
"The most valuable features are its user-friendly interface and seamless navigation."
"It gives us the possibility to store and query this data and also do this efficiently and securely and without delays."
"It provides deep visibility into your cloud and distributed applications, from microservices to serverless architectures. It quickly identifies and resolves the root causes of issues, like gaining visibility into all the cloud-based and on-prem applications."
"I really like the visualization that you can do within it; that's really handy, and product-wise, it is a very good and stable product."
"The initial installation and setup were straightforward."
"The solution offers good stability."
"Overall, considering key aspects like cost, learning curve, and data indexing architecture, Elasticsearch is a very good tool."
 

Cons

"Azure AI Search could be improved regarding compatibility with Azure Blob Storage in order to keep the prompts and everything that I am using for building the tool safe."
"The solution's stability could be better."
"The pricing is room for improvement."
"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."
"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Azure Search as probably a six-out-of-ten."
"Dashboards could be more flexible, and it would be nice to provide more drill-down capabilities."
"Its licensing needs to be improved. They don't offer a perpetual license. They want to know how many nodes you will be using, and they ask for an annual subscription. Otherwise, they don't give you permission to use it. Our customers are generally military or police departments or customers without connection to the internet. Therefore, this model is not suitable for us. This subscription-based model is not the best for OEM vendors. Another annoying thing about Elasticsearch is its roadmap. We are developing something, and then they say, "Okay. We have removed that feature in this release," and when we are adapting to that release, they say, "Okay. We have removed that one as well." We don't know what they will remove in the next version. They are not looking for backward compatibility from the customers' perspective. They just remove a feature and say, "Okay. We've removed this one." In terms of new features, it should have an ODBC driver so that you can search and integrate this product with existing BI tools and reporting tools. Currently, you need to go for third parties, such as CData, in order to achieve this. ODBC driver is the most important feature required. Its Community Edition does not have security features. For example, you cannot authenticate with a username and password. It should have security features. They might have put it in the latest release."
"I have not been using the solution for many years to know exactly the improvements needed. However, they could simplify how the YML files have to be structured properly."
"I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten. The main issue is a general sum of all factors."
"While integrating with tools like agents for ingesting data from sources like firewalls is valuable, I believe prioritizing improvements to the core product would be more beneficial."
"The solution itself needs improvement. There is an index issue in which the data starts to crash as it increases."
"They should improve its documentation. Their official documentation is not very informative. They can also improve their technical support. They don't help you much with the customized stuff. They also need to add more visuals. Currently, they have line charts, bar charts, and things like that, and they can add more types of visuals. They should also improve the alerts. They are not very simple to use and are a bit complex. They could add more options to the alerting system."
"Elasticsearch could be improved in terms of scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is comparable."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
"​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."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"The solution is affordable."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"It can move from $10,000 US Dollars per year to any price based on how powerful you need the searches to be and the capacity in terms of storage and process."
"I rate Elastic Search's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We are using the open-sourced version."
"The cost varies based on factors like usage volume, network load, data storage size, and service utilization. If your usage isn't too extensive, the cost will be lower."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"This product is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"The version of Elastic Enterprise Search I am using is open source which is free. The pricing model should improve for the enterprise version because it is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
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 doi...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search is easy to use in Azure cloud. Mostly, my full company uses Azure cloud, so it is easy to use. Cost-wise, my company found Elastic Search is good. Cost matters. Based on cost and use...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
The initial configuration could be easier; at first, the learning curve is a little high, and over time, it becomes easier. For me, the initial configuration might be improved.
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
We use Elastic Search for a research application based on paper study, and the primary usage is for indexing the data and then functioning in a similar way to an e-commerce search bar.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure AI Search vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.