Side by side

OpenSearch vs Weaviate

Both stand on ai search and discovery platforms software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

OpenSearch

Free plan APILinuxMac+3

OpenSearch provides a free search and analytics suite with ingestion, visualization, and machine-learning capabilities. The warning about minimal distributions is important: those builds do not include security features.

Visit OpenSearch

Weaviate

Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+1

Weaviate offers vector search infrastructure with hybrid search and both hosted and self-managed deployment. The free tier has collection and tenant limits and excludes backups and high-availability replication.

Visit Weaviate

The facts

	OpenSearch	Weaviate
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows	API, Linux, Self-hosted, Web
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	See the plans
Plans published	1	3
Maker	OpenSearch	Weaviate
Website	opensearch.org	weaviate.io
On ai search and discovery platforms software	#5 of 28	#9 of 28

OpenSearch: what it does well

Open source under Apache License 2.0
Supports full-text and multi-index search
Includes dashboards and a data collector
Can run on premises or in hybrid and multicloud environments
Works with Beats, Fluent Bit, and Fluentd

What to know first

Minimal distributions lack security features
Minimal distributions are intended for controlled environments or embedding

Weaviate: what it does well

Combines vector and BM25 keyword search
Supports hosted and self-managed deployment
Offers multi-tenancy and tenant isolation
Weaviate Cloud includes encryption and daily backups
Integrates with major cloud and model providers

What to know first

Free plan has no backups or high-availability replication
Free plan permits one collection
Windows lacks native support
Flex starts at $45 a month

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