Manticore Search vs Meilisearch

Explore the comprehensive full-text search engine comparison: Manticore Search vs Meilisearch. Dive into performance, features, and scalability to determine the optimal solution for your project’s search requirements.

Overview

Selecting the right search engine is vital for project success. Compare Manticore Search and Meilisearch, two powerful search engines, to find the ideal match for your high-performance, scalable search needs.

By examining key features, we can better understand how Manticore Search and Meilisearch compare in various use cases and requirements. Let’s delve into the specifics of each engine to help you make an informed decision for your search implementation.

Manticore Search Logo

What is Manticore Search

Manticore Search is an open-source, high-performance search engine designed for full-text search and real-time data indexing. Known for its speed, efficiency and scalability, it excels in handling large datasets and offers scalability, making it a great choice for applications requiring rapid search responses. With a focus on simplicity, it provides flexible features like advanced filtering, ranking, and querying capabilities, while also being highly customizable.

Meilisearch Logo

What is Meilisearch

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine designed for easy integration into apps and websites, offering real-time search with results displayed in under 50 milliseconds. It supports features like typo tolerance, faceted search, filtering, sorting, and hybrid search (combining full-text and semantic search). With extensive language support, including optimized handling of languages like Chinese and Japanese, Meilisearch also provides security management via API keys and multi-tenancy for personalized searches. Its RESTful API and SDKs simplify integration, and Meilisearch Cloud offers a hosted option with analytics and monitoring.

Key Features

Manticore Search and Meilisearch are two powerful full-text search engines that offer unique features for document indexing and searching. Each engine brings its own strengths to the table, providing developers with tools to create fast and efficient search experiences. Let’s explore the features that set these engines apart and help you determine which one best suits your project needs.

FeatureManticore SearchMeilisearch
Open source
Full-text search
Autocomplete (predictive typing suggestions)
Fuzzy search (handling typos)
Vector Search (semantic and similarity-based searching)⚠️ (experimental)
Boolean full-text search (AND, OR, NOT query support)
Faceting (organize and narrow search results)
Grouping and aggregation (combine related search results)
Geospatial search (location-based search capabilities)
JOINs (combine data from different sources)
Synonyms (support for alternate search terms)
Percolate search (match queries to incoming data)
Real-time indexing (immediate document updates)
Secondary indexes (support multiple indexes for faster queries)
Row-wise storage (row-oriented data storage)
Columnar storage (column-oriented data storage)
Docstore (store original values)
Cost-based query optimizer (choose the best query plan based on data)
In-place updates (update documents without re-indexing)
Nested object/JSON field (support complex JSON structures)
Auto-schema (automatic schema generation for data)
SQL support (query using SQL syntax)
JSON support (query using JSON syntax)
Bulk inserts (insert large amounts of data efficiently)
Distributed search (search across multiple nodes)
High availability (data mirroring and load balancing)
Replication (copy data across different nodes for redundancy)⚠️ (experimental)
Auto-sharding (automatic data partitioning across nodes)⚠️ coming soon🔗
Authentication (built-in user authentication features)

In summary, Manticore Search and Meilisearch are both strong options for full-text search, but each has a different focus. Manticore Search is great if you need scalability, advanced querying, and a wide range of features for handling more complex searches. Meilisearch, on the other hand, stands out for its simplicity and quick setup, making it a good fit for smaller to medium-sized projects. When deciding between them, consider factors like the size of your data, how complicated your searches are, and the resources you have available for development.

API Client Libraries (SDKs)

When it comes to integration with your programming language, both Manticore Search and Meilisearch offer SDKs and tools to help you build powerful search functionality. Let’s compare the SDKs offered by both engines.

Programming languageManticore SearchMeilisearch
PHP PHP
JavaScript JavaScript
TypeScript TypeScript
Python Python
Ruby Ruby
Go Go
Rust Rust
Java Java
Elixir Elixir
C++ C++
C# C#

Both Manticore Search and Meilisearch offer a range of SDKs for popular programming languages. Choose the language that best suits your project’s requirements and integrate your preferred search engine seamlessly into your application.

External Integrations

Explore the external integrations and ecosystem compatibility of Manticore Search and Meilisearch, two versatile full-text search engines. This comparison highlights how these solutions interface with various databases, programming languages, and third-party tools, enabling seamless integration into diverse technology stacks and enhancing your search implementation capabilities.

Integration nameManticore SearchMeilisearch
MySQL client support
MySQLdump support
Elasticdump support
Apache Superset integration
Grafana integration
Fluentbit integration
Logstash integration
Filebeat integration
Vector.dev integration
Kibana integration⚠️ coming soon🔗
Kafka integration⚠️ coming soon🔗

Both Manticore Search and Meilisearch offer integration options to work with various external services and technologies. Consider your existing technology stack, preferred programming languages, and required third-party integrations when selecting between these two robust search solutions for your project.

Use Cases

Manticore Search and Meilisearch are both powerful search engines, but they excel in different areas. Understanding their specific capabilities will help you decide which one fits your project best.

  • E-commerce Search: Manticore is ideal for large, complex e-commerce platforms with its real-time indexing, faceted search, and vector search capabilities. Meilisearch offers fast and relevant search results, making it a good option for e-commerce sites, especially when speed and relevance are key.
  • Log Management: Manticore’s real-time indexing, JSON support, and integration with tools like Grafana make it highly effective for handling log analysis and monitoring tasks. Meilisearch is not designed for large-scale log management and may not be the best fit for this use case.
  • Content Management Systems: Both engines offer robust full-text search features, but Manticore provides advanced querying and relevance tuning, making it a good choice for large-scale CMS implementations. Meilisearch is also suitable for content management, providing easy-to-integrate search capabilities for small to medium-sized CMS projects.
  • Real-time Analytics: Manticore’s real-time indexing, SQL support, and ability to process large amounts of data make it an excellent choice for analytics platforms that need fast, complex data analysis. Meilisearch is not as equipped to handle these more advanced analytics scenarios.
  • Vector Search: Both Manticore and Meilisearch support vector search, which is useful for applications like recommendation systems and semantic search.
  • Multilingual Search: Both engines support multilingual search. Manticore offers more advanced options for handling various languages and complex linguistic needs. Meilisearch provides easy, out-of-the-box multilingual search, making it a simple solution for projects with basic language requirements.
  • High-Performance Web Search: Both Manticore and Meilisearch offer fast search capabilities. However, Manticore is optimized for high-traffic websites with large datasets, providing consistent performance even with complex and heavy search loads. Meilisearch is also fast, but it’s better suited for smaller data volumes and projects where ease of use and simplicity are key factors.
  • Geospatial Applications: Manticore offers more advanced querying options for complex geospatial searches, making it suitable for intricate location-based applications. Meilisearch supports basic geospatial search, but is better suited for simpler location-based use cases.

Manticore Search stands out in scenarios requiring advanced features, scalability, and high performance, especially for larger and more complex search implementations. Meilisearch offers a simple, fast solution, ideal for projects that prioritize ease of integration and quick results. The right choice depends on the size, complexity, and specific needs of your project.

Performance

When comparing Manticore Search and Meilisearch for full-text search capabilities, performance is a crucial factor. Both engines offer efficient indexing and searching functionalities, but their performance characteristics may vary depending on the specific use case and data volume.

Manticore is faster in small Hackernews benchmark (small data)

than Meilisearch in the 1 million Hackernews comments benchmark

Unfortunately, Meilisearch failed the other tests due to insufficient RAM or its incompatibility with the queries.
For more detailed and unbiased performance comparisons across various database systems, we recommend exploring the Independent Database Benchmarks project at db-benchmarks.com.

Conclusion

When it comes to full-text search engines, Manticore Search and Meilisearch are two powerful options with distinct strengths.

  • Manticore Search offers advanced features and scalability for complex, large-scale search scenarios
  • Meilisearch provides ease of use and quick setup for smaller to medium-sized projects
  • Manticore Search excels in real-time indexing and advanced querying capabilities
  • Both engines support various programming languages and offer good performance

Both Manticore Search and Meilisearch are robust search solutions, but their suitability depends on your specific project requirements. Consider factors such as data volume, query complexity, and development resources when making your choice.

Try Manticore Search

Experience the power of Manticore Search firsthand and see how it compares to Meilisearch.

Install Manticore Search

Install Manticore Search

Install Manticore Search