Blast vs Quickwit
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Quickwit
Cloud-native search engine for logs and traces
| Feature | Blast | Quickwit |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 14 · At risk | 93 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,073 | ★ 11,666 |
| First released | 2017 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Splunk, Elasticsearch |
What are Blast and Quickwit?
Blast
Blast is a full-text search and indexing server written in Go and built on the Bleve library, with support for clustering through the Raft consensus algorithm. It exposes both gRPC and HTTP APIs for indexing and searching documents.
- Distributed clustering
- Bleve-based indexing
- gRPC and HTTP APIs
- Raft consensus
Quickwit
Quickwit is an open-source, cloud-native search engine optimized for log management, distributed tracing and analytics on large datasets stored in object storage. It is designed to be cost efficient at scale.
- Search directly on object storage
- Optimized for logs and traces
- Decoupled compute and storage
- Elasticsearch-compatible API
Blast vs Quickwit: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Blast's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Quickwit is actively maintained. Blast is written in Go, while Quickwit is built with Rust. Blast is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Quickwit. Blast is the more established project (first released 2017), while Quickwit arrived in 2021. Quickwit has the considerably larger community, at 11,666 GitHub stars versus 1,073.
Why pick each one
Choose Blast if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Choose Quickwit if…
- Very cost effective at scale
- Modern Rust codebase
Watch out for
- Focused on append-only data
Frequently asked questions
Is Blast or Quickwit better?
Quickwit is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Blast if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Blast and Quickwit free and open-source?
Yes. Blast is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Quickwit under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Blast and Quickwit with Docker?
Blast: yes. Quickwit: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Blast or Quickwit?
Blast has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Quickwit. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.