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Amazon AWS CloudSearch 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

Amazon AWS CloudSearch
Ranking in Search as a Service
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 December 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is 5.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Solr is 4.6%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS CloudSearch5.7%
Solr4.6%
Other89.7%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

HarishMahanta - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr PeopleSoft Consultant at People Tech
A reasonably priced solution that provides scalability, stability, reliability, and security
In terms of what needs improvement, I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds. Let's say we have various clouds in the market, like Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and AWS Cloud. However, security-wise, I don't think AWS is bad. It's good only, especially in comparison to Oracle Cloud, if you really use Oracle, while also considering the fact that PeopleSoft is an Oracle product. AWS is a separate cloud, and Oracle has its own cloud. If you are in a new PeopleSoft and Oracle and you are using a third-party cloud, it means it is not easy since we can't think it is easy. I mean, if you are using Oracle products and you are using Oracle Cloud, it will be easier for you. However, it has a cost in comparison to AWS. Oracle Cloud is too costly. According to region, we segregate because it depends on the organization's strength. Let's say your organization has 1,000 customers. In that case, on a daily basis, let's say one customer was released or discontinued using the product. Then, you have to remove the solution. However, if you use Oracle Cloud, that space will remain there. In the case of AWS, they will immediately cut down their space, meaning in terms of reuse ability, it will reduce the cost. In our case, AWS is the best in the market, actually. We have various clouds like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure Cloud, the features of which are very different. There are a lot of features in AWS Cloud since I am not in the market providing service on the products. I am just using that tool to access our clients' database and deliver our day-to-day service. I interact with the clients regarding their issues, whatever they are facing. There is this one kind of interface we use to access things because they are in AWS Cloud. If your customer is in Oracle Cloud, then there will be a different approach to accessing it. In our case, we can use AWS or Oracle, so it doesn't matter to us.
reviewer823641 - 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

"CDN service reduces latency when accessing our web application."
"The quality of the solution is good."
"It is remarkably efficient and beneficial."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The best feature is its scalability in that Cloud is always on the fly."
"It will remain alive in the market. The solution will be stable in the market."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon AWS CloudSearch is its ability to receive data quickly. You can access your data easily in a short time."
"I've found the solution to be very scalable."
"It has improved our search ranking, relevancy, search performance, and user retention."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to perform a natural language search."
"​Sharding data, Faceting, Hit Highlighting, parent-child Block Join and Grouping, and multi-mode platform are all valuable features."
"One of the best aspects of the solution is the indexing. It's already indexed to all the fields in the category. We don't need to spend so much extra effort to do the indexing. It's great."
 

Cons

"AWS CloudSearch's documentation isn't very clear. Also, the on-premise version of the solution is less stable than the cloud version."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch is highly stable. However, the speed depends on your internet connection."
"I do not have any suggestions for improvements at this time."
"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 price of the solution can be expensive."
"Security is a concern but they're working on it."
"I would say that it needs to keep its cost competitive in the market, especially in comparison to other clouds."
"We'd like to see more database features."
"The performance for this solution, in terms of queries, could be improved."
"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."
"SolrCloud stability, indexing and commit speed, and real-time Indexing need improvement."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure how much we pay a year. It might be around $30,000 a year."
"There was no license needed to use this solution."
"In comparison to IBM and Microsoft, the pricing is more favorable."
"Our license costs around $4,000 per month."
"Amazon AWS CloudSearch charging is based on how many resources you consume or and the solution is known to be a bit expensive."
"We chose AWS because of its cost and stability."
"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."
"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
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmugMug
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 Amazon AWS CloudSearch vs. Solr and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.