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Elastic Search vs Microsoft FAST 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

Elastic Search
Ranking in Indexing and Search
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (5th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
Microsoft FAST
Ranking in Indexing and Search
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Indexing and Search category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 12.0%, down from 26.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft FAST is 5.3%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Indexing and Search Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search12.0%
Microsoft FAST5.3%
Other82.7%
Indexing and Search
 

Featured Reviews

Anurag Pal - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Search and aggregations have transformed how I manage and visualize complex real estate data
Elastic Search consumes lots of memory. You have to provide the heap size a lot if you want the best out of it. The major problem is when a company wants to use Elastic Search but it is at a startup stage. At a startup stage, there is a lot of funds to consider. However, their use case is that they have to use a pretty significant amount of data. For that, it is very expensive. For example, if you take OLTP-based databases in the current scenario, such as ClickHouse or Iceberg, you can do it on 4GB RAM also. Elastic Search is for analytical records. You have to do the analytics on it. According to me, as far as I have seen, people will start moving from Elastic Search sooner or later. Why? Because it is expensive. Another thing is that there is an open source available for that, such as ClickHouse. Around 2014 and 2012, there was only one competitor at that time, which was Solr. But now, not only is Solr there, but you can take ClickHouse and you have Iceberg also. How are we going to compete with them? There is also a fork of Elastic Search that is OpenSearch. As far as I have seen in lots of articles I am reading, users are using it as the ELK stack for logs and analyzing logs. That is not the exact use case. It can do more than that if used correctly. But as it involves lots of cost, people are shifting from Elastic Search to other sources. When I am talking about pricing, it is not only the server pricing. It is the amount of memory it is using. The pricing is basically the heap Java, which is taking memory. That is the major problem happening here. If we have to run an MVP, a client comes to me and says, "Anurag, we need to do a proof of concept. Can we do it if I can pay a 4GB or 16GB expense?" How can I suggest to them that a minimum of 16GB is needed for Elastic Search so that your proof of concept will be proved? In that case, what I have to suggest from the beginning is to go with Cassandra or at the initial stage, go with PostgreSQL. The problem is the memory it is taking. That is the only thing.
reviewer1466883 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Robust solution with good value
Microsoft FAST is quite robust. Our clients are quite happy with it. For other users who already have a solution in place, we recommend Microsoft FAST because it is more compatible and you can organize the solution with Microsoft components. If you are with any other third party, there could be a chance that the required output is not what you would expect. But with Microsoft, it will work better. It is compatible with the older generation systems, so you can offer it. On a scale of one to ten, I would give Microsoft FAST an eight because I'm quite comfortable with it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend Elastic Search to other people who want to have fast search in their applications."
"The UI is very nice, and performance wise it's quite good too."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the Discovery option for the visualization of logs on a GPU instead of on the server."
"The ability to aggregate log and machine data into a searchable index reduces time to identify and isolate issues for an application."
"ELK Elasticsearch is 100% scalable as scalability is built into the design"
"There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it."
"The Attack Discovery feature helps to dig into incidents from where they occurred to determine how the incident originated and its source; it gives an entire path of attack propagation, showing when it started, what happened, and all events that took place to connect the entire cyber incident."
"The AI-based attribute tagging is a valuable feature."
"Microsoft FAST is a really amazing search application."
"Microsoft FAST is quite robust. Our clients are quite happy with it."
 

Cons

"Elastic Enterprise Search's tech support is good but it could be improved."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search. That's the only area in which I'm not sure whether it's a limitation on our end in terms of knowledge or a technical limitation from Elastic Enterprise Search. There is another solution we are looking at that rides on Elastic Enterprise Search. And the limit is for any sort of records that you're doing or data analysis you're trying to do, you can only extract 500 records at a time. I know the open-source nature has a lot of limitations, Otherwise, Elastic Enterprise Search is a fantastic solution and I'd recommend it to anyone."
"What they need is to be more transparent about the actual setup of the cluster and the deployment process."
"This product could be improved with additional security, and the addition of support for machine learning devices."
"The GUI is the part of the program which has the most room for improvement."
"The one area that can use improvement is the automapping of fields."
"They could improve some of the platform's infrastructure management capabilities."
"Elasticsearch should have simpler commands for window filtering."
"If there is any change in a system or a configuration or an update, we might face some issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"We use the free version for some logs, but not extensive use."
"​The pricing and license model are clear: node-based model."
"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."
"The premium license is expensive."
"The price could be better."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise45
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
On the subject of pricing, Elastic Search is very cost-efficient. You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
From the UI point of view, we are using most probably Kibana, and I think they can do much better than that. That is something they can fine-tune a little bit, and then it will definitely be a good...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
MS FAST
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
Moffitt Cancer Center, Hitachi Solutions, Manupatra Information Solutions, Unique World, _KODA AUTO a.s., MindTree Ltd, Mississippi Department of Transportation
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Search vs. Microsoft FAST and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.