Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon AWS CloudSearch 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

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
Elastic Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

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 Elastic Search is 17.8%, up from 8.8% 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…
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The quality of the solution is good."
"Document indexing, text-based search API, and Geospatial searches are all good features."
"It is remarkably efficient and beneficial."
"CDN service reduces latency when accessing our web application."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"The best feature is its scalability in that Cloud is always on the fly."
"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."
"Data indexing of historical data is the most beneficial feature of the product."
"It helps us to analyse the logs based on the location, user, and other log parameters."
"The AI-based attribute tagging is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch is its convenience in handling unstructured data."
"Elasticsearch includes a graphical user interface (GUI) called Kibana. The GUI features are extremely beneficial to us."
"The search speed is most valuable and important."
"The most valuable features are the ease and speed of the setup."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its utility and usefulness."
 

Cons

"A reboot should be enhanced."
"Regarding the period of propagation on CDN servers, sometimes we update photos or files and we don't see the update instantly. We need to wait for sometime."
"Maybe they are common in Egypt, but you should make a request on Amazon to create a function to monitor CPU performance, memory, and files. It is very difficult in AWS. I would tell them it should be simple, just drag and drop. I think they could develop this option so we can drag and drop to monitor performance of the processor and memory."
"We'd like to see more database features."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."
"The price of the solution can be expensive."
"AWS CloudSearch's documentation isn't very clear. Also, the on-premise version of the solution is less stable than the cloud version."
"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."
"The UI point of view is not very powerful because it is dependent on Kibana."
"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's integration and configuration are not easy. Not many people know exactly what to do."
"The metadata gets stored along with indexes and isn't queryable."
"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."
"Improving machine learning capabilities would be beneficial."
"There is an index issue in which the data starts to crash as it increases."
"There are potential improvements based on our client feedback, like unifying the licensing cost structure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."
"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch charging is based on how many resources you consume or and the solution is known to be a bit expensive."
"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."
"We are using the Community Edition because Elasticsearch's licensing model is not flexible or suitable for us. They ask for an annual subscription. We also got the development consultancy from Elasticsearch for 60 days or something like that, but they were just trying to do the same trick. That's why we didn't purchase it. We are just using the Community Edition."
"we are using a licensed version of the product."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"I rate Elastic Search's pricing an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Search as a Service solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
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?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
It would be useful if a feature for renaming indices could be added without affecting the performance of other features. However, overall, the consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are already...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
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 Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.