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Meilisearch vs Typesense

Meilisearch: Developer-friendly Rust search engine with typo tolerance and built-in hybrid semantic search. Typesense: In-memory, typo-tolerant search engine in C++ with vector, hybrid and conversational search.

key differences

  • Licensing: Meilisearch is open source (permissive) (MIT (Community Edition); BUSL-1.1 for Enterprise Edition features); Typesense is open source (copyleft) (GNU GPL v3).
  • Meilisearch is built for larger datasets (≤ 10 TB) than Typesense (≤ 100 GB).
  • Horizontal scaling is addon in Meilisearch and none in Typesense.
  • Only Typesense has joins, in-memory.

choose meilisearch for

  • +Website and documentation search
  • +E-commerce product search with facets
  • +SaaS in-app search
  • +Semantic search over a product catalog

best at · Search, Vector search, RAG

choose typesense for

  • +E-commerce and marketplace search
  • +Docs and website search
  • +Geo search for listings
  • +Replacing Algolia to cut per-request costs

best at · Search, Vector search, RAG

MeilisearchDeveloper-friendly Rust search engine with typo tolerance and built-in hybrid semantic search.
TypesenseIn-memory, typo-tolerant search engine in C++ with vector, hybrid and conversational search.
overview
Primary model
Search Engine
Search Engine
Also supports
Document, Vector
Document, Vector
Type
Database engine
Database engine
Status
Active
Active
Developer
Meili SAS
Typesense, Inc.
First release
2018
2017
Latest version
1.56.0 (Oct 26, 2026)
30.2 (Apr 19, 2026)
License
Open source (permissive)MIT (Community Edition); BUSL-1.1 for Enterprise Edition features
Open source (copyleft)GNU GPL v3
Free tier
✓
✓
popularity
WhichDB Score
32.3
28.8
Rank
#72
#95
GitHub stars
59.7K
27.1K
Stack Overflow questions
101
70
scale & guarantees
Comfortable data size
Medium (≤ 10 TB)
Small (≤ 100 GB)
Horizontal scaling
Addon
None
Multi-region
None
Read replicas
ACID
Limited
Limited
Consistency
Eventual
Strong
Schema
Flexible
Flexible
Architecture
Single node, Client server
Primary replica, In memory, Client server
deployment
Self-hosted
✓
✓
Vendor-managed cloud
✓
✓
Serverless
—
—
Embedded
—
—
Edge
—
—
Clouds
–
–
capabilities
Transactions
—
—
Joins
—
✓
Secondary indexes
✓
✓
Full-text search
✓
✓
Vector search
✓
✓
Geospatial
✓
✓
JSON
✓
✓
Change data capture
—
—
Triggers
—
—
Stored procedures
—
—
Materialized views
—
—
TTL / expiry
—
—
Pub/Sub
—
—
Columnar storage
—
—
In-memory
—
✓
Durable persistence
✓
✓
Compression
—
—
Encryption at rest
—
—
Role-based access
✓
✓
Time travel
—
—
Branching
—
—
Online schema changes
—
—
Streaming ingest
—
—
Offline sync
—
—
Runs in WebAssembly
—
—
interfaces
Query languages
Meilisearch search API (JSON)
Typesense search API (JSON)
Client languages
JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java, Swift
JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Java, Dart, Swift
Best for
Search, Vector search, RAG
Search, Vector search, RAG, Geo
Add more to this comparisonNot sure either fits? Try smart match

Meilisearch vs Typesense: FAQ

What is the difference between Meilisearch and Typesense?

Meilisearch: Developer-friendly Rust search engine with typo tolerance and built-in hybrid semantic search. Typesense: In-memory, typo-tolerant search engine in C++ with vector, hybrid and conversational search. Licensing: Meilisearch is open source (permissive) (MIT (Community Edition); BUSL-1.1 for Enterprise Edition features); Typesense is open source (copyleft) (GNU GPL v3). Meilisearch is built for larger datasets (≤ 10 TB) than Typesense (≤ 100 GB). Horizontal scaling is addon in Meilisearch and none in Typesense.

When should I choose Meilisearch over Typesense?

Choose Meilisearch for website and documentation search; E-commerce product search with facets; and SaaS in-app search. Choose Typesense for E-commerce and marketplace search; docs and website search; and geo search for listings.

Is Meilisearch or Typesense more popular?

Meilisearch ranks #72 on the WhichDB Score (32.3/100) and Typesense ranks #95 (28.8/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.

Are Meilisearch and Typesense open source?

Yes. Meilisearch is open source. License: MIT (Community Edition); BUSL-1.1 for Enterprise Edition features. Yes. Typesense is open source. License: GNU GPL v3.