# Meilisearch vs OpenSearch (slim)

> Meilisearch scores 78.6 (A) to OpenSearch's 68 (B) for vector search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meilisearch-vs-opensearch.md (~2,600 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meilisearch-vs-opensearch.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/meilisearch-vs-opensearch
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Meilisearch scores 78.6 (A) on agent readiness against OpenSearch's 68 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. OpenSearch leads on payments & pricing. Both do vector search.

- Meilisearch: A 78.6, rank #14 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/meilisearch.min.md
- OpenSearch: B 68, rank #233 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/opensearch.min.md
- Meilisearch, good for Retrieval where typo-tolerant keyword relevance, filters and facets matter as much as vectors, with embeddings generated by the engine. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 77; Schema & documentation, 93 against 77; Agent ergonomics, 87 against 80; Maintenance & community, 93 against 84; Transparency & trust, 74 against 57. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where OpenSearch loses 5 points for them.
- OpenSearch, good for A team that already runs OpenSearch for logs or text search and wants vectors and hybrid search in the same cluster, with fine-grained access control. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also Runs on your own machine.

| Category | Meilisearch | OpenSearch |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 90 | 77 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 93 | 77 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 87 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 67 | 70 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 93 | 84 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 74 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Meilisearch | OpenSearch |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Meilisearch | OpenSearch Software Foundation |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Licence | MIT for the Community Edition. Enterprise Edition code, which powers Meilisearch Cloud, is BUSL-1.1 | Apache-2.0 for the engine, the plugins, the clients, the API specification and the MCP server |
| Tools exposed | 4 | 9 |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-22 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-03-17 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 60k stars, 752k npm/wk | 14k stars |