Compare Medusa Search to Other Search Engines
In this guide, you'll compare Medusa Search to the search engines that Medusa projects commonly use, so you can decide which one fits your project. Each engine also has a detailed comparison guide, linked from every section.
The Engines at a Glance#
Medusa Search is a managed search service for Cloud projects. It stores your search indexes outside of your database and serves search queries for them, from full-text queries with relevance ranking to vector search over embeddings.
The Search Module drives every engine through a provider, so the query.search calls you write and the index definitions you declare for your own entities stay the same. What changes is which provider serves them:
Engine | What it is | Who provides the module provider |
|---|---|---|
Medusa Search | A managed search service that Cloud runs for every environment of your project. | Medusa, as the |
Full-text search inside the database your Medusa application already uses. | Medusa, as the | |
Algolia | A hosted search product with deep relevance tuning, merchandising, and analytics. | You, as a Search Module Provider you build and maintain. |
Meilisearch | An open-source search engine you self-host, or run on Meilisearch Cloud. | You, as a Search Module Provider you build and maintain. |
Summary Comparison#
The following table compares the four engines across the concerns that usually decide the choice. Refer to each engine's detailed guide for the behavior behind a row.
Concern | Medusa Search | PostgreSQL | Algolia | Meilisearch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Setup | Medusa provisions it per environment. | Run | Create an account, an index, and keys per environment. | Run the engine yourself, or create a Meilisearch Cloud project. |
Who operates it | Medusa. | You, as part of your database. | Algolia. | You when you self-host, or Meilisearch on their cloud. |
Integration code you maintain | None by default. Medusa manages the infrastructure for you. | None for products. An index definition per custom entity you search. | A provider you build, and an index definition per entity you search. | A provider you build, and an index definition per entity you search. |
Local development | Unavailable. The PostgreSQL provider covers local instead. | The default provider locally, with no extra service. | No local engine. Local development points at a real index. | The same engine runs locally as a binary or container. |
Relevance tuning | A weight per searchable field. | Four relevance tiers that weights collapse onto. | Ranking rules, synonyms, and merchandising controls. | Ranking rules, synonyms, and stop words. |
Vector and hybrid search | Supported on the Scale and Enterprise plans, with embeddings it can create for you on the Enterprise plan. | Not supported. The provider ignores a vector field and rejects a vector query. | Supported through Algolia's own vector features. | Supported, with an embedder that can compute the embeddings. |
Per-environment isolation | Medusa manages one set of indexes per environment for you. | Tables in the environment's database, so they travel with it. | You name and provision an index per environment. | You provision an index or an instance per environment. |
What you pay for | No separate subscription. Your plan includes an allowance of search requests. | Your database's own resources, which search shares with checkout. Other Cloud costs may apply depending on your usage, as explained in the detailed comparison guide | A subscription priced on stored records and search requests. Other Cloud costs may apply depending on your usage, as explained in the detailed comparison guide | Your own infrastructure, or a Meilisearch Cloud subscription. Other Cloud costs may apply depending on your usage, as explained in the detailed comparison guide |
Detailed Comparisons#
Each guide compares Medusa Search to one engine across setup, integration, indexing, search capabilities, storefront querying, and cost:
Migrate to Medusa Search#
If you already run Algolia or Meilisearch and you're moving to Medusa Search, the following guides cover the end-to-end steps, including how to map your index settings and backfill your documents: