Tool profile
Hosted search platform for autocomplete, filtering, ranking, and fast product discovery.
Ecommerce and marketplace catalog search with facets
Algolia is the default SaaS choice when autocomplete, faceted browse, and merchandising rules must ship without operating Elasticsearch. Dashboards let non-engineers tune ranking and redirects; SDKs cover web, mobile, and server. Costs are driven by records in the index and search or recommend requests per month, with different overage rates on Grow versus Grow Plus (AI-enhanced) plans.
Per algolia.com/pricing (March 2026), Grow and Grow Plus both include 10,000 search requests/month and 100,000 records in the base framing; beyond bundled allowances, public overage examples include about $0.50 per 1,000 extra search requests on Grow versus about $1.75 per 1,000 on Grow Plus, and about $0.40 per 1,000 extra records beyond included records on those plans. Elevate is the enterprise path for larger or regulated programs.
Instrument query volume early—cached typeahead can multiply requests. Compare Meilisearch or Typesense for self-hosted cost control; compare OpenSearch when log analytics and search share one ops model.
Quick fit
Editorial take
The key buyer mistake with Algolia is underestimating record growth and assuming only query volume matters. If your catalog, locales, or synonym-heavy indexing grows fast, records can become as important as requests in the bill.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
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Pricing snapshot
Algolia's public pricing now centers on Build and Grow self-serve plans, with search requests and records billed as separate meters rather than under the legacy usage-unit model. Algolia's current support docs tied to the pricing page explain that indexing operations are not separately billed on these plans, aside from a protective limit. Elevate remains enterprise and sales-led, so the practical buyer task is confirming the live Build versus Grow allowances and overage math in Algolia's current calculator before purchase.
Alation
PaidEnterprise data catalog
Enterprise data intelligence and catalog platform for search, governance, trust, and AI-ready knowledge layers over organizational data.
Choose Alation when the buying problem is enterprise trust, governance, and discoverability across data assets.
