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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Meilisearch Has a Free API — Lightning-Fast Search in 50ms

#meilisearch #search #webdev #javascript

Meilisearch is the lightning-fast, open-source search engine — typo-tolerant full-text search in <50ms. It's the free alternative to Algolia and Elasticsearch.

Why Meilisearch?

  • 50ms search — instant results, even on large datasets
  • Typo-tolerant — "javscript" still finds "JavaScript"
  • Zero config — works great out of the box
  • RESTful API — simple HTTP calls, any language
  • Faceted search — filter by categories, price ranges, etc.
  • Multi-tenancy — API key-based tenant isolation
  • 11MB binary — runs on a Raspberry Pi

Quick Start 

# Docker
docker run -d -p 7700:7700 \
  -v meili-data:/meili_data \
  getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11

# Or binary
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
./meilisearch --master-key="YOUR_MASTER_KEY"
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Index Documents 

import { MeiliSearch } from "meilisearch";

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

// Add documents
await client.index("movies").addDocuments([
  { id: 1, title: "The Matrix", genre: "sci-fi", year: 1999, rating: 8.7 },
  { id: 2, title: "Inception", genre: "sci-fi", year: 2010, rating: 8.8 },
  { id: 3, title: "The Dark Knight", genre: "action", year: 2008, rating: 9.0 },
  { id: 4, title: "Pulp Fiction", genre: "crime", year: 1994, rating: 8.9 },
  { id: 5, title: "Interstellar", genre: "sci-fi", year: 2014, rating: 8.7 },
]);
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Search 

// Basic search
const results = await client.index("movies").search("matrx");
// Finds "The Matrix" despite typo!

// With filters
const sciFi = await client.index("movies").search("", {
  filter: ["genre = 'sci-fi'", "year > 2000"],
  sort: ["rating:desc"],
  limit: 10,
});

// Faceted search
const faceted = await client.index("movies").search("", {
  facets: ["genre", "year"],
});
// Returns: { genre: { "sci-fi": 3, "action": 1, "crime": 1 }, year: { ... } }
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Express.js Search API 

import express from "express";
import { MeiliSearch } from "meilisearch";

const app = express();
const meili = new MeiliSearch({ host: "http://localhost:7700", apiKey: "YOUR_KEY" });

app.get("/api/search", async (req, res) => {
  const { q, genre, minRating, page = 1, limit = 20 } = req.query;

  const filters = [];
  if (genre) filters.push(`genre = '${genre}'`);
  if (minRating) filters.push(`rating >= ${minRating}`);

  const results = await meili.index("products").search(q, {
    filter: filters,
    limit: Number(limit),
    offset: (Number(page) - 1) * Number(limit),
    attributesToHighlight: ["title", "description"],
  });

  res.json({
    hits: results.hits,
    total: results.estimatedTotalHits,
    page: Number(page),
    processingTimeMs: results.processingTimeMs,
  });
});

app.listen(3000);
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React Search Component 

import { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import { instantMeiliSearch } from "@meilisearch/instant-meilisearch";
import { InstantSearch, SearchBox, Hits, RefinementList } from "react-instantsearch";

const searchClient = instantMeiliSearch("http://localhost:7700", "YOUR_SEARCH_KEY");

function SearchPage() {
  return (
    <InstantSearch indexName="products" searchClient={searchClient}>
      <div className="flex gap-8">
        <aside>
          <h3>Category</h3>
          <RefinementList attribute="category" />
          <h3>Brand</h3>
          <RefinementList attribute="brand" />
        </aside>
        <main>
          <SearchBox placeholder="Search products..." />
          <Hits hitComponent={ProductCard} />
        </main>
      </div>
    </InstantSearch>
  );
}

function ProductCard({ hit }) {
  return (
    <div className="card">
      <h2>{hit.name}</h2>
      <p>{hit.description}</p>
      <span>${hit.price}</span>
    </div>
  );
}
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Meilisearch vs Elasticsearch vs Algolia vs Typesense

Feature Meilisearch Elasticsearch Algolia Typesense
Speed <50ms 50-200ms <50ms <50ms
Typo tolerance Built-in Plugin Built-in Built-in
Setup Single binary JVM cluster Cloud only Single binary
Memory ~100MB 2GB+ (JVM) N/A ~100MB
Cost Free (OSS) Free (OSS) $$$$ Free (OSS)
InstantSearch Yes Yes Yes Yes
Facets Yes Yes Yes Yes
Multi-tenancy API keys Indices API keys API keys

Need to scrape data from any website and get it in structured JSON? Check out my web scraping tools on Apify — no coding required, results in minutes.

Have a custom data extraction project? Email me at spinov001@gmail.com — I build tailored scraping solutions for businesses.

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