Developer tools · Updated October 2026
Algolia is a hosted search API for adding fast search to sites and apps. If you would rather own your tools, here are 5 open source alternatives to Algolia, ranked by GitHub stars. Each one is free to use under its license, and you can read, change, and often self-host the code.
Meilisearch is both the most popular, with 59.6k stars, and the most recently updated, with a commit on Oct 21, 2026.
| Project | Stars | License | Language | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59.6k | Other | Rust | Oct 21, 2026 | |
| 27k | GPL-3.0 | C++ | Oct 21, 2026 | |
| 13.9k | Apache-2.0 | Java | Oct 21, 2026 | |
| 12.1k | GPL-3.0 | C++ | Oct 21, 2026 | |
| 11.7k | Apache-2.0 | Rust | Oct 21, 2026 |
by meilisearch
A lightning-fast search engine API bringing AI-powered hybrid search to your sites and applications.
by typesense
Open Source alternative to Algolia + Pinecone and an Easier-to-Use alternative to ElasticSearch ⚡ 🔍 ✨ Fast, typo tolerant, in-memory fuzzy Search Engine for building delightful search experiences
by opensearch-project
🔎 Open source distributed and RESTful search engine.
by manticoresoftware
Open-source search database for full-text, vector, and hybrid search with real-time indexing and SQL.
by quickwit-oss
Cloud-native OSS search engine for observability
By GitHub stars, Meilisearch is the most popular open source alternative to Algolia right now, with 59.6k stars, followed by Typesense and OpenSearch. The best fit depends on your setup, so compare their licenses, languages, and recent activity in the table above.
Yes. All 5 projects on this page are open source, so the software itself is free to use, study, and change. Some of them also sell a hosted version or paid support.
Meilisearch (last commit Oct 21, 2026), Quickwit (last commit Oct 21, 2026), and OpenSearch (last commit Oct 21, 2026) have the most recent commits. Licenses on this list include GPL-3.0 and Apache-2.0.