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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Meilisearch Has a Free Open-Source Search Engine

#opensource #search #webdev #javascript

Meilisearch is a free, open-source search engine that provides instant, typo-tolerant search out of the box. It's designed to be a drop-in replacement for Algolia — without the price tag.

What Is Meilisearch?

Meilisearch is a lightning-fast search engine built in Rust. It returns results in under 50ms, handles typos automatically, and requires zero configuration to get started.

Why developers choose it:

  • Search results in <50ms
  • Typo tolerance (built-in)
  • Faceted search and filters
  • Multi-language support
  • RESTful API
  • SDKs for every major language
  • Self-hostable (single binary)
  • Beautiful instant search UI components

Quick Start

Install 

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

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

# macOS
brew install meilisearch
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Start the Server 

./meilisearch --master-key="your-secret-key"
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Add Documents 

curl -X POST http://localhost:7700/indexes/products/documents \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key" \
  --data-binary @products.json
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Search 

curl "http://localhost:7700/indexes/products/search?q=laptop" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key"
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Results in <50ms. With typo tolerance. Zero configuration.

SDK Examples

JavaScript 

import { MeiliSearch } from "meilisearch";

const client = new MeiliSearch({
  host: "http://localhost:7700",
  apiKey: "your-secret-key"
});

// Add documents
await client.index("products").addDocuments([
  { id: 1, name: "Wireless Keyboard", price: 49.99, category: "Electronics" },
  { id: 2, name: "Mechanical Keyboard", price: 129.99, category: "Electronics" }
]);

// Search
const results = await client.index("products").search("keybord"); // typo handled!
console.log(results.hits); // Returns both keyboards
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Python 

import meilisearch

client = meilisearch.Client("http://localhost:7700", "your-secret-key")

# Search with filters
results = client.index("products").search("keyboard", {
    "filter": "price < 100",
    "sort": ["price:asc"]
})
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Features That Replace Algolia

Feature Algolia Free Meilisearch
Search requests 10K/month Unlimited
Records 10K Unlimited
Typo tolerance Yes Yes
Faceted search Yes Yes
Geo search Paid Free
Multi-tenancy Paid Free
Self-host No Yes
Cost $0-$110+/mo $0 forever

Instant Search UI

Meilisearch provides ready-to-use UI components:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/meilisearch/dist/bundles/meilisearch.umd.js"></script>
<script>
  const search = new MeiliSearch({ host: "http://localhost:7700" });
  // Instant search as you type
</script>
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Also integrates with:

  • React InstantSearch
  • Vue InstantSearch
  • Angular InstantSearch
  • Docsearch (documentation sites)

Advanced Features

Faceted Search 

const results = await index.search("laptop", {
  facets: ["brand", "price_range", "ram"]
});
// Returns results + facet distribution
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Geo Search 

const results = await index.search("", {
  filter: "_geoRadius(48.8566, 2.3522, 5000)" // 5km from Paris center
});
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Multi-Index Search 

const results = await client.multiSearch({
  queries: [
    { indexUid: "products", q: "keyboard" },
    { indexUid: "blog_posts", q: "keyboard" }
  ]
});
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Performance

  • 50ms average search latency
  • Handles millions of documents
  • Index 100K documents in seconds
  • Low memory footprint
  • Written in Rust for maximum performance

Who Uses Meilisearch?

With 48K+ GitHub stars:

  • E-commerce sites replacing Algolia
  • Documentation sites (Docsearch alternative)
  • SaaS products with search features
  • Content platforms and blogs

Get Started

  1. Download single binary or use Docker
  2. Add your documents via API
  3. Search instantly with typo tolerance
  4. Add UI components to your frontend

Full-text search in under 5 minutes. No Algolia bills.

Need data to power your search engine? Check out my web scraping tools on Apify — extract product data, reviews, and content from any website. Custom scrapers: spinov001@gmail.com

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