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Azure Search 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

Azure Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
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
67
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (10th), Vector Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure Search is 14.5%, up from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 14.5%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Sandeep Srirangam - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer engagement & documentation about APIs are great, but it would be good if the UI is a bit more intuitive for search experience
I use the solution mainly to search the logs and to search for VMs by their names or subscription names. I wouldn't rate it great since the logs are a bit complicated The solution was really pretty good. The customer engagement was good. The presented documentation or exposure to the APIs to get…
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

"Creates indexers to get data from different data sources."
"Offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and scalability when integrating with applications."
"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
"The customer engagement was good."
"The amount of flexibility and agility is really assuring."
"The product is extremely configurable, allowing you to customize the search experience to suit your needs."
"Azure Search is well-documented, making it easy to understand and implement."
"It provides good access capabilities to various platforms."
"The flexibility and the support for diverse languages that it provides for searching the database are most valuable. We can use different languages to query the database."
"I really like the visualization that you can do within it. That's really handy. Product-wise, it is a very good and stable product."
"The solution is very good with no issues or glitches."
"The most valuable features are its user-friendly interface and seamless navigation."
"The security portion of Elasticsearch is particularly beneficial, allowing me to view and analyze security alerts."
"The solution is valuable for log analytics."
"A good use case is saving metadata of your systems for data cataloging. Various systems, like those opened in metadata and similar applications, use Elasticsearch to store their text data."
"The search speed is most valuable and important."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the site found a better way to filter things based on subscription."
"For SDKs, Azure Search currently offers solutions for .NET and Python. Additional platforms would be welcomed, especially native iOS and Android solutions for mobile development."
"Adding items to Azure Search using its .NET APIs sometimes throws exceptions."
"For availability, expanding its use to all Azure datacenters would be helpful in increasing awareness and usage of the product.​"
"The pricing is room for improvement."
"The after-hour services are slow."
"The initial setup is not as easy as it should be."
"They should add an API for third-party vendors, like a security operating center or reporting system, that would be a big improvement."
"It should be easier to use. It has been getting better because many functions are pre-defined, but it still needs improvement."
"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."
"Elastic Search needs to improve authentication. It also needs to work on the Kibana visualization dashboard."
"I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. We faced a few issues."
"New Relic could be more flexible, similar to Elasticsearch."
"Could have more open source tools and testing."
"There are potential improvements based on our client feedback, like unifying the licensing cost structure."
"Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."
"The cost is comparable."
"For the actual costs, I encourage users to view the pricing page on the Azure site for details.​"
"​When telling people about the product, I always encourage them to set up a new service using the free pricing tier. This allows them to learn about the product and its capabilities in a risk-free environment. Depending on their needs, the free tier may be suitable for their projects, however enterprise applications will most likely required a higher, paid tier."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, where one is the low price, and ten is the high price."
"I think the solution's pricing is ok compared to other cloud devices."
"The solution is affordable."
"It can move from $10,000 US Dollars per year to any price based on how powerful you need the searches to be and the capacity in terms of storage and process."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"This product is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"The price could be better."
"This is a free, open source software (FOSS) tool, which means no cost on the front-end. There are no free lunches in this world though. Technical skill to implement and support are costly on the back-end with ELK, whether you train/hire internally or go for premium services from Elastic."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
The after-hour services are slow. It could be better.
What is your primary use case for Azure Search?
We use the solution to link the Active Directory account to Office 365.
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?
I don't know about pricing. That is dealt with by the sales team and our account team. I was not involved with that.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
I found an issue with Elasticsearch in terms of aggregation. They are good, yet the rules written for this are not really good. There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa
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 Azure Search vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.