Meilisearch vs Vespa

Meilisearch

Keyword, vector and hybrid search share one request, behind keys scoped by action and index and a published OpenAPI 3.1 file with 143 operations. The built-in MCP server is experimental and read-only, and Cloud access starts with a browser sign-up and a 14-day trial.

Vespa

Vespa Cloud publishes hourly unit prices, a 99.5% uptime agreement for paying customers and a trial with $300 of credits and no card. Every call needs an application package deployed first, no OpenAPI file was found in the reviewed documentation, and Vespa.ai says it has no official public MCP server.

Meilisearch

1. Create a key with only search, documents.get and indexes.get on the indexes needed. The default search key fails listIndexes and describeIndex over MCP
2. Enable the mcpRoute experimental feature first. Until then /mcp answers feature_not_enabled
3. For hybrid search send hybrid with an embedder name configured in the index settings and a semanticRatio from 0 to 1
4. Writes return a taskUid and run asynchronously. Poll the task before searching for the new documents
5. On 503 too_many_search_requests, wait for the Retry-After header (10 seconds) before retrying

Vespa

1. Deploy an application package with a schema before feeding or querying. Use vespa deploy and wait for the endpoint to report ready
2. Send a token as Authorization: Bearer only to the endpoint marked Token. The mTLS endpoint needs the client certificate and key
3. Set hits, offset and presentation.summary on queries. hits is capped at 400 by default and the query timeout defaults to 0.5s
4. On 429 from /document/v1 reduce the feed rate and back off. On 507 stop feeding, because the cluster is out of memory or disk
5. Use the condition parameter for test-and-set writes and expect 412 when it fails or the document is missing