Algolia
Hosted search API with instant results, typo tolerance and ready-made UI components for web and mobile.
- Price
- Pay as you go: $0.50 per 1K searches over 10K/month
- Free plan
- Yes
- Setup
- Needs a developer
- Up and running
- A day for a polished first version with InstantSearch; longer if your data changes often and needs syncing.
What Algolia is for
Algolia is the search box of your app, run on its servers: you send it your products or content, and it returns results as the user types, forgiving typos. You don't run a search server, and ready-made components (InstantSearch) give you the search bar, filters and results page. You pay by number of searches and records.
How it plugs into your product
- 1Create a free account (no card) and an application.
- 2Send your data as records (one per product or article) from your server, and keep it in sync when it changes.
- 3Add the InstantSearch components to your front end with the search-only key.
- 4Before launch, add a card and switch to Grow, so the free quota doesn't block your search.
Does it fit your idea?
It fits if
- A marketplace or catalog with up to 100K items that needs search-as-you-type and filters live this week.
- A help center or docs site with modest traffic, where 10K free searches a month cover the start.
- You have no one to run a search server and prefer to pay per use.
Look elsewhere if
- Search is your product's main action and traffic will grow fast: the per-search bill grows with it. Look at Typesense or Meilisearch.
- You want to self-host on your own server: Algolia is cloud only.
- Your users barely search, like an internal tool with 20 people: the database's own search is enough.
What people only find out after building
Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.
With search-as-you-type, every keystroke is a search request. One user typing "sneakers" can count as several searches.
Official source: algolia.comWhen the free plan hits 10K searches or 50K records, Algolia may suspend the search or add its attribution to your results until you pick a paid plan.
Official source: algolia.comOn the free plan, if the account stays inactive for more than 30 days, Algolia may delete your data. A paused prototype can come back empty.
Official source: algolia.comThe free plan caps each record at 10 KB and the index at 1 GB. Long articles or product pages may need to be split into several records, which count toward your quota.
Official source: algolia.comPick the plan carefully: Grow Plus charges $1.75 per 1K extra searches, 3.5 times Grow's $0.50, so moving up for its extra features multiplies the search bill.
Official source: algolia.com
Price
Pay as you go: $0.50 per 1K searches over 10K/month
Free plan: 10K search requests/month and 50K records.
- Free tier
- 10K searches/month, 50K records
- First paid plan
- Grow: $0.50/1K searches, $0.40/1K records
- Self-host
- No, cloud only
Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing
What it costs in practice
Estimate: 1,000 users × 30 searches a month × 5 keystrokes per search = 150K search requests, with 5K products. On Grow: (150K − 10K included) × $0.50 per 1K = $70/month; records stay inside the 100K included. If you search only on Enter, it's 30K requests: about $10/month.
Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.
At a glance
- Free plan: yes
- Open source: no
“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.
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