Blast vs Sonic
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Blast | Sonic |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 14 · At risk | 96 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,073 | ★ 21,349 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Algolia, Elasticsearch |
What are Blast and Sonic?
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
Sonic
Sonic is a fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend that can be used as a simpler, more efficient alternative to Elasticsearch. It is designed to ingest and query text with minimal resources.
- Extremely low memory usage
- Schema-less ingestion
- Fast prefix and word search
- Simple text protocol
Blast vs Sonic: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Blast's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Sonic is actively maintained. Blast is written in Go, while Sonic is built with Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Blast versus MPL-2.0 for Sonic. Sonic is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Blast. Blast is the more established project (first released 2017), while Sonic arrived in 2019. Sonic has the considerably larger community, at 21,349 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 Sonic if…
- Tiny resource footprint
- Very fast for autocomplete
Watch out for
- No relevance scoring or filtering
Frequently asked questions
Is Blast or Sonic better?
Sonic 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 Sonic free and open-source?
Yes. Blast is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Sonic under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Blast and Sonic with Docker?
Blast: yes. Sonic: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Blast or Sonic?
Sonic has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Blast. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.