# OpenSearch vs Vespa (slim)

> Vespa scores 70 (BB) to OpenSearch's 68 (B) for vector search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/opensearch-vs-vespa.md (~2,500 tokens) · this version ~630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/opensearch-vs-vespa.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/opensearch-vs-vespa
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Vespa scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against OpenSearch's 68 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OpenSearch leads on schema & documentation and payments & pricing. Both do vector search.

- OpenSearch: B 68, rank #233 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/opensearch.min.md
- Vespa: BB 70, rank #165 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vespa.min.md
- 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 Schema & documentation, 77 against 58; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also Runs on your own machine.
- Vespa, good for Teams that need hybrid retrieval with custom ranking at scale and can maintain a schema and application package. Ahead on Security & auth, 75 against 70; Maintenance & community, 91 against 84; Transparency & trust, 85 against 57. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Free to start without a card.

| Category | OpenSearch | Vespa |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 77 | 80 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 58 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 70 | 75 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 91 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 57 | 85 |

| Fact (where they differ) | OpenSearch | Vespa |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | OpenSearch Software Foundation | Vespa.ai AS |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 for the engine, the plugins, the clients, the API specification and the MCP server | Apache-2.0 for the engine, the Vespa CLI and pyvespa. Vespa Cloud is a paid hosted service |
| Tools exposed | 9 | none |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-22 | 2026-10-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Popularity | 14k stars | 7.1k stars, 180k PyPI/wk |