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Elastic Search 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

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)
Solr
Ranking in Search as a Service
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 17.2%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 5.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search17.2%
Solr5.2%
Other77.6%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user823641 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Search Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
The Natural Language Search capability is helpful and intuitive for our users
The initial setup is complex because this is a distributed system, and you have to make sure that every individual node is aware of every other node in existence. This search engine has a large capacity, so you need to make sure that there is enough buffer space. We took one month to deploy and perform a fresh setup. Our strategy was to start with a local data center, before venturing into cross data center replicas. A staff size of two to four people is suitable for deploying and maintaining the solution, depending upon the scale. They would set up the solution and put monitoring in place for the indexing jobs, as well as design the schema so that the data can feed well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic Search is very quick when handling a large volume of data."
"This product has notably improved the way we store and use logs, from having a more user-friendly, centralized solution (for those who just needed a quick glance, without being masters of sed and awk) to implementing various mechanisms for machine-learning from our logs, and sending alerts for anomalies."
"The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis."
"The fact that you can dump any type of format in the database without any specific reformatting is fantastic."
"The solution has good security features. I have been happy with the dashboards and interface."
"We can easily collect all the data and view historical trends using the product. We can view the applications and identify the issues effectively."
"Elastic Search has excellent features, particularly its scalability and speed."
"The initial setup is very easy for small environments."
"This is an infinitely scalable product with state-of-the-art technology, and the value of Natural Language Search is tremendous."
"​Sharding data, Faceting, Hit Highlighting, parent-child Block Join and Grouping, and multi-mode platform are all valuable features."
"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, so we don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing, which is great."
"We use Solr to index over 600k documents; it's very fast, flexible to use, and the speed of indexing individual documents has been great."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
 

Cons

"Regarding what I dislike about Elastic Search, there is one issue that occurs because Elastic Search is not my primary database; it serves as a substitute database for the searching part."
"We see the need for some improvements with Elasticsearch. We would like the Elasticsearch package to include training lessons for our staff."
"To do what we want to do with Elastic Search, the queries can get complex and require a fuller understanding of the DSL."
"Elastic Enterprise Search could improve the report templates."
"The initial configuration could be easier; at first, the learning curve is a little high, and over time, it becomes easier."
"Could have more open source tools and testing."
"The real-time search functionality is not operational due to its impact on system resources."
"We'd like to see more integration in the future, especially around service desks or other ITSM tools."
"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."
"Memory utilization could be better but it is an industrial strength tool so some overhead is to be expected."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's grammar and syntax should be easier."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."
"I rate Elastic Search's pricing an eight out of ten."
"It can be expensive."
"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

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.
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 Elastic Search vs. Solr and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.