Meilisearch Has a Free API — Lightning-Fast Search That Just Works

#meilisearch #api #search #database

TL;DR

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine that's fast (50ms searches), typo-tolerant, and requires zero configuration. It's the easiest way to add search to your app — Algolia-quality results, self-hosted and free.

What Is Meilisearch?

Meilisearch makes search simple:

50ms response times — instant search-as-you-type
Typo-tolerant — finds results even with spelling mistakes
Zero config — smart defaults, works out of the box
Faceted search — filter by categories, price ranges, etc.
Multi-language — tokenizes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, etc.
RESTful API — simple HTTP endpoints
Free — MIT license, or Meilisearch Cloud free tier

Quick Start

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

# Or curl install
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
./meilisearch --master-key="YOUR_KEY"

Index Documents

# Add documents via API
curl -X POST 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/documents' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY' \
  --data-binary '[
    {"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}
  ]'

Search

# Instant search
curl 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY' \
  -d '{"q": "matrix"}'

# Typo-tolerant: "matix" still finds "The Matrix"!
curl 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search' \
  -d '{"q": "matix"}'

JavaScript SDK

import { MeiliSearch } from "meilisearch";

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

// Index documents
const index = client.index("products");
await index.addDocuments([
  { id: 1, name: "MacBook Pro", category: "laptops", price: 1999 },
  { id: 2, name: "iPhone 15", category: "phones", price: 999 },
  { id: 3, name: "AirPods Pro", category: "audio", price: 249 },
]);

// Search
const results = await index.search("macbok"); // typo-tolerant!
console.log(results.hits); // [{ name: "MacBook Pro", ... }]

// Search with filters
const filtered = await index.search("apple", {
  filter: ["price < 1000", "category = phones"],
  sort: ["price:asc"],
  limit: 10,
});

// Faceted search
const faceted = await index.search("", {
  facets: ["category", "brand"],
});
console.log(faceted.facetDistribution);
// { category: { laptops: 5, phones: 12, audio: 8 }, brand: { ... } }

React Integration

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

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

function App() {
  return (
    <InstantSearch indexName="products" searchClient={searchClient}>
      <SearchBox />
      <Hits hitComponent={Hit} />
    </InstantSearch>
  );
}

function Hit({ hit }) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h3>{hit.name}</h3>
      <p>${hit.price}</p>
    </div>
  );
}

Settings

// Configure searchable and filterable attributes
await index.updateSettings({
  searchableAttributes: ["name", "description", "category"],
  filterableAttributes: ["price", "category", "brand", "inStock"],
  sortableAttributes: ["price", "rating", "createdAt"],
  rankingRules: [
    "words", "typo", "proximity", "attribute", "sort", "exactness",
  ],
  synonyms: {
    phone: ["smartphone", "mobile", "cell"],
    laptop: ["notebook", "computer"],
  },
});

Meilisearch vs Alternatives

Feature	Meilisearch	Algolia	Elasticsearch	Typesense
Free tier	Self-host / Cloud	10K searches	Self-host	Self-host / Cloud
Setup time	1 minute	5 min	30+ min	5 min
Typo tolerance	Built-in	Built-in	Plugin	Built-in
Latency	<50ms	<50ms	100-500ms	<50ms
Faceted search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Config needed	Zero	Minimal	Heavy	Minimal
Language	Rust	N/A	Java	C++

Resources

Building a search engine over web data? My Apify scraping tools extract structured data from any website — index it in Meilisearch for instant search. Questions? Email spinov001@gmail.com

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