Typesense Has a Free API — Search Engine Built for Speed and Simplicity

#typesense #api #search #database

TL;DR

Typesense is an open-source search engine designed for speed — written in C++, it delivers sub-millisecond search results with typo tolerance, faceting, and geo-search out of the box.

What Is Typesense?

Typesense is developer-friendly search:

Blazing fast — single-digit millisecond searches
C++ engine — optimized from the ground up for search
Typo tolerance — finds results despite spelling errors
Geo-search — location-based filtering and sorting
Vector search — built-in semantic/hybrid search
Curation — pin/hide specific results
Free — GPL-3, or Typesense Cloud

Quick Start

# Docker
docker run -p 8108:8108 \
  -v /tmp/typesense-data:/data \
  typesense/typesense:latest \
  --data-dir /data \
  --api-key=YOUR_API_KEY

Create Collection and Index

import Typesense from "typesense";

const client = new Typesense.Client({
  nodes: [{ host: "localhost", port: 8108, protocol: "http" }],
  apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY",
});

// Create collection (schema)
await client.collections().create({
  name: "products",
  fields: [
    { name: "name", type: "string" },
    { name: "description", type: "string" },
    { name: "price", type: "float" },
    { name: "category", type: "string", facet: true },
    { name: "rating", type: "float" },
    { name: "in_stock", type: "bool", facet: true },
    { name: "location", type: "geopoint" },
  ],
  default_sorting_field: "rating",
});

// Index documents
await client.collections("products").documents().import([
  {
    name: "MacBook Pro 16",
    description: "Powerful laptop for professionals",
    price: 2499,
    category: "Laptops",
    rating: 4.8,
    in_stock: true,
    location: [37.7749, -122.4194],
  },
  {
    name: "iPhone 15 Pro",
    description: "Premium smartphone with titanium design",
    price: 1199,
    category: "Phones",
    rating: 4.7,
    in_stock: true,
    location: [37.7749, -122.4194],
  },
]);

Search

// Basic search (typo-tolerant)
const results = await client
  .collections("products")
  .documents()
  .search({
    q: "macbok",  // typo — still finds MacBook!
    query_by: "name,description",
  });

// Search with filters and facets
const filtered = await client
  .collections("products")
  .documents()
  .search({
    q: "laptop",
    query_by: "name,description",
    filter_by: "price:<2000 && in_stock:true",
    sort_by: "rating:desc",
    facet_by: "category",
    per_page: 10,
  });

// Geo search — find products near a location
const nearby = await client
  .collections("products")
  .documents()
  .search({
    q: "*",
    query_by: "name",
    filter_by: "location:(37.78, -122.41, 10 km)",
    sort_by: "location(37.78, -122.41):asc",
  });

Vector/Semantic Search

// Create collection with vector field
await client.collections().create({
  name: "docs",
  fields: [
    { name: "title", type: "string" },
    { name: "content", type: "string" },
    {
      name: "embedding",
      type: "float[]",
      embed: {
        from: ["title", "content"],
        model_config: {
          model_name: "ts/all-MiniLM-L12-v2",
        },
      },
    },
  ],
});

// Hybrid search (keyword + semantic)
const results = await client
  .collections("docs")
  .documents()
  .search({
    q: "how to deploy to production",
    query_by: "title,content,embedding",
  });

Typesense vs Alternatives

Feature	Typesense	Meilisearch	Algolia	Elasticsearch
Language	C++	Rust	N/A	Java
Latency	<5ms	<50ms	<50ms	100-500ms
Typo tolerance	Yes	Yes	Yes	Plugin
Vector search	Built-in	Planned	Yes	Yes
Geo-search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Curation	Yes	No	Yes	No
Free tier	Self-host	Self-host	10K searches	Self-host

Resources

Need to search scraped web data? My Apify tools extract data from any website — index it in Typesense for blazing-fast search. Questions? Email spinov001@gmail.com