Elasticsearch vs OpenSearch
- ✦ Inverted index
- ✦ JSON document storage
- ✦ Aggregations
- ✦ k-NN vector search
- ✦ SQL query support
- ✦ ML inference nodes
Real-World Scenarios: When to Choose Which
The question that matters: “In what situation will I regret choosing A over B after 3 months?”
Build relevance-ranked search over product catalogs with typo tolerance and faceted filtering
Store document embeddings and run hybrid text+vector search with the k-NN plugin to improve retrieval accuracy
Ingest server logs via Logstash, store in Elasticsearch, visualize anomalies in Kibana in near-real-time
Route CloudWatch logs to OpenSearch Service via Kinesis for centralized log search without leaving AWS
Correlate security events across systems using Elasticsearch SIEM to detect threats within minutes
Correlate AWS CloudTrail and VPC flow logs in OpenSearch to detect anomalous access patterns in near-real-time
Power autocomplete and faceted search across millions of SKUs with sub-100ms query latency
Migrate from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch with API-compatible clients and keep the same application code
Pricing Intelligence
Elasticsearch Plans
Free tier available
- • Core search features
- • Self-hosted
- • Basic security
- • From $95/mo
- • Managed deployment
- • Kibana included
- • ML features
- • Cross-cluster search
- • Dedicated support
OpenSearch Plans
Free tier available
- • Apache 2.0 license
- • Self-hosted
- • Full features
- • From $0.096/hr per instance
- • Managed by AWS
- • Pay-as-you-go
Feature Matrix
1 differences found across 14 standardized features
- •Full-text search
- •Inverted index
- •Distributed sharding
- •JSON document storage
- •Aggregations
- •Geospatial queries
- •Vector search (kNN)
- •REST API
- •Index lifecycle management
- •Role-based access control
- •Kibana integration
- •Machine learning anomaly detection
- •Cross-cluster replication
- •Snapshot and restore
- •Full-text search
- •k-NN vector search
- •SQL query support
- •Distributed sharding
- •ML inference nodes
- •Security plugin (built-in)
- •Observability dashboards
- •Anomaly detection
- •Index rollups
- •REST API
- •Cross-cluster replication
- •Snapshot to S3
- •ISM (Index State Management)
- •Alerting plugin
Pros & Cons Face-Off
Evaluative strengths and weaknesses: not feature lists
- +Best-in-class full-text search with relevance tuning
- +Rich aggregation engine for log analytics and dashboards
- +Massive ecosystem with Logstash, Kibana, and Beats
- −SSPL license prevents use in competing managed services
- −Resource-intensive: requires significant heap memory for JVM
- +Apache 2.0 license - no SSPL restrictions
- +API-compatible with Elasticsearch for easy migration
- +Built-in security plugin at no extra cost vs Elastic
- −Feature development lags Elasticsearch in some areas
- −AWS-managed version has less flexibility than self-managed Elastic
At a Glance
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Comparisons
Sources
- 1.Elasticsearch Official Pricing–Vendor pricing page
- 2.OpenSearch Official Pricing–Vendor pricing page
- 3.Elasticsearch Official Website–Official product website
- 4.OpenSearch Official Website–Official product website