Meilisearch Has a Free API — Lightning-Fast Search for Your App

#meilisearch #search #api #opensource

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine that returns results in under 50ms. If you need full-text search with typo tolerance and filtering, Meilisearch is the easiest option.

What Is Meilisearch?

Meilisearch is a search engine designed for end-user facing search. It handles typos, ranking, filtering, and faceting with zero configuration.

Free tier (Meilisearch Cloud):

100K documents
10K searches/month
No credit card needed

Quick Start

# Docker
docker run -p 7700:7700 getmeili/meilisearch:latest

# Or binary
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
./meilisearch

REST API

# Add documents
curl -X POST http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/documents \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{"id":1,"title":"Inception","genre":"Sci-Fi"},{"id":2,"title":"The Matrix","genre":"Sci-Fi"},{"id":3,"title":"Interstellar","genre":"Sci-Fi"}]'

# Search (with typo tolerance!)
curl "http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search" \
  -d '{"q":"interstlar"}'
# Returns "Interstellar" despite the typo!

# Search with filters
curl "http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search" \
  -d '{"q":"sci","filter":"genre = Sci-Fi"}'

JavaScript SDK

import { MeiliSearch } from "meilisearch";

const client = new MeiliSearch({ host: "http://localhost:7700" });

await client.index("products").addDocuments(products);
const results = await client.index("products").search("laptop");
console.log(results.hits);

Use Cases

E-commerce search — product search with facets
Documentation search — instant doc search
Content platforms — article/blog search
Autocomplete — search-as-you-type
Internal tools — search any dataset

Meilisearch vs Alternatives

Feature	Meilisearch	Elasticsearch	Algolia
Setup time	1 min	30 min	Cloud
Typo tolerance	Built-in	Config needed	Built-in
Resource usage	Low	High	Cloud
Price	Free/OSS	Free/OSS	Paid
Relevancy	Great	Configurable	Great