Elasticsearch dominates modern search with superior full-text capabilities, real-time analytics through the Elastic Stack, and dramatically higher adoption (70% market share vs Solr's 15%), while Solr remains a robust alternative for organizations prioritizing stability, lower resource consumption, and established Apache community support.
Elasticsearch vs Solr — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Open-source search and analytics engine for logs, metrics, and full observability.
Mature, battle-tested Apache Lucene-based search engine focused on stability and operational simplicity.
Market Adoption & Community Size. Real-Time Analytics Capability. Memory Consumption (Typical Setup). Full-Text Search Performance. License Model. Operational Complexity. Stack Integration & Ecosystem
Choose Elasticsearch if you need modern full-text search, real-time analytics, log aggregation, and are building new applications with dedicated teams. Choose Solr if you prioritize operational simplicity, lower resource overhead, pure open-source licensing, or maintain existing Solr deployments with stable requirements.
Elasticsearch: $0.10 - $0.20 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 30+ days (self-hosted) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 40-80 (self-hosted) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Unlimited (via client libraries) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Petabyte-scale (1000+ TB) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 7 (Lucene/DSL - steep learning curve) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Self-hosted, SaaS (Elastic Cloud), or Kubernetes | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 30-90 days | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $0 (self-hosted) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $0 (unlimited after infrastructure cost) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 50-200ms | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 0 (requires custom hardening) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 3 (anomaly detection, forecasting, outlier detection) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Unlimited (enterprise only) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 12-48 (community forums) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 75,000 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 65,800 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 100-500ms | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1,000+ (tested to 10,000 with advanced tuning) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Native (analyzers, relevance tuning, fuzzy matching) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1-3 days (schemaless indexing) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: SQL via plugin (Elastic SQL), primary is Query DSL | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 32-64GB for equivalent throughput | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 66,000+ | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $0-$10,000 (self-hosted) or $20,000-$60,000 (managed) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 45-120 (manual investigation required) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 6-12 weeks | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1000+ via community/Beats | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Unlimited (storage-dependent) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 500,000+ EPS per cluster | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 3-6 months | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Complex Query DSL requiring technical expertise | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 512MB | Apache Solr: 256MB
Elasticsearch: 68,000+ stars | Apache Solr: 3,800+ stars
Elasticsearch: 5-10 minutes | Apache Solr: 30-45 minutes
Elasticsearch: 65 docs/sec per thread | Apache Solr: 100 docs/sec per thread
Elasticsearch: $5,000-$50,000 | Apache Solr: $0 (open-source)
Elasticsearch: Via aggregations (requires custom queries) | Apache Solr: Native facet parameter (out-of-box)
Elasticsearch: 14-28 days | Apache Solr: N/A
Monthly Cost (100GB index, 1M queries/month)
Elasticsearch: $200-500 self-hosted | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Petabyte-scale (unlimited) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Requires DevOps expertise | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 100-300ms | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 9/10 (plugins, analyzers, scripting) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Community-based or 4+ hours (enterprise) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 2-6 weeks | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $3,000-$8,000 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $0.02-$0.05 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: ~300 integrations | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Unlimited (configurable) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1.0-2.0 FTE | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Advanced EQL with full customization | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 8/10 (requires DevOps expertise) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 2-4 GB | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 120-240 minutes | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 50-200 ms | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1+ Billion (across clusters) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 40+ aggregation types | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Manual configuration required | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: ~60,000 stars | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $50,000-150,000 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 14-30 days | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 30-40 (via Beats) | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: $0 (open-source) or $12,000 | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Requires third-party integrations | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: Full Elasticsearch Query DSL and custom scripts | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 1M+ active developers | Apache Solr: N/A
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) Improvement
Elasticsearch: Depends on manual investigation | Apache Solr: N/A
Elasticsearch: 80-200 hours (extensive) | Apache Solr: N/A
How to choose between Elasticsearch and Apache Solr
Elasticsearch vs Solr — Structured Comparison Data
Machine-readable comparison dataset for Elasticsearch vs Solr. Contains 79 attribute comparisons, 5 FAQ pairs.
Elasticsearch vs Solr — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Elasticsearch vs Solr.
Which search engine is better for log aggregation and observability?
Elasticsearch is significantly superior for log aggregation. The unified Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch + Kibana + Beats + Logstash) provides end-to-end log collection, processing, visualization, and alerting out of the box. Solr requires manual integration of separate tools like Kafka and Fluentd, making the architecture considerably more complex. Elasticsearch captures ~75% of the enterprise log management market.
How much more expensive is Elasticsearch than Solr operationally?
Elasticsearch typically costs 40-50% more in infrastructure due to higher memory consumption (6 GB baseline vs 3 GB for Solr). Additionally, enterprise-grade Elasticsearch features (encryption, advanced ML, security) require licensing starting at $5,600/year. Solr is fully open-source with optional community support. For small deployments (under 100GB data), the difference is negligible; for large-scale deployments (1TB+), infrastructure costs favor Solr by $15,000-30,000 annually.
Is Solr a better choice for stability and avoiding breaking changes?
Yes. Solr releases major versions every 18-24 months with careful backward compatibility planning. Elasticsearch releases 2-3 major versions annually, often requiring migration steps and dependency updates. Organizations running mission-critical search systems with limited DevOps resources should prefer Solr's conservative release cycle. However, Elasticsearch's frequent updates also deliver features 12-18 months faster.
Can Solr perform real-time analytics like Elasticsearch?
Solr supports faceting and basic aggregations but achieves 200-500ms latencies compared to Elasticsearch's 50-100ms for complex queries. For real-time analytics dashboards requiring sub-second response times, Elasticsearch is the standard choice. Solr analytics typically require offloading to specialized systems like Druid or Clickhouse for true real-time capabilities.
Which has better full-text search relevance tuning?
Elasticsearch offers more advanced relevance tuning through custom BM25 parameters, query_string DSL, function_score, and machine learning-based ranking. Solr supports BM25 and TF-IDF with limited customization through boost factors. For e-commerce and content search requiring fine-grained relevance control, Elasticsearch's tooling is superior. Both use Lucene under the hood but Elasticsearch exposes more tuning levers.
How to Choose Between Elasticsearch and Apache Solr
Consider: Market Adoption & Community Size
Market Adoption & Community Size: Elasticsearch has 70% enterprise search market share, while Apache Solr has 15% enterprise search market share.
Consider: Real-Time Analytics Capability
Real-Time Analytics Capability: Elasticsearch has Native via Elastic Stack; sub-100ms aggregations, while Apache Solr has Requires third-party integration; higher latency.
Consider: Memory Consumption (Typical Setup)
Memory Consumption (Typical Setup): Elasticsearch has 4-8 GB minimum per node, while Apache Solr has 2-4 GB minimum per node.
Full-Text Search Performance: Elasticsearch has Advanced relevance tuning; BM25 + custom scoring, while Apache Solr has TF-IDF + BM25; more limited customization.
License Model: Elasticsearch has Freemium (Elastic License + AGPL); enterprise paid, while Apache Solr has 100% open-source Apache 2.0 license.
Operational Complexity: Elasticsearch has Steeper learning curve; frequent major updates, while Apache Solr has Simpler deployment; slower release cycle.
Stack Integration & Ecosystem: Elasticsearch has Kibana, Beats, Logstash (unified Elastic Stack), while Apache Solr has Standalone tool; manual integrations required.