Blast vs Vespa
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Blast | Vespa |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 14 · At risk | 91 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 4,096 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, source | docker, kubernetes, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,073 | ★ 7,109 |
| First released | 2017 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch | Elasticsearch, Algolia |
What are Blast and Vespa?
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
Vespa
Vespa is an open-source platform for low-latency computation over large data sets, powering search, recommendation and AI applications. It combines storing, searching, ranking and organizing data.
- Combined search and ML ranking
- Vector and tensor computation
- Real-time indexing at scale
- Used for large recommendation systems
Blast vs Vespa: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Blast's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Vespa is actively maintained. Blast is written in Go, while Vespa is built with Java. Blast is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 4,096 MB for Vespa. Vespa has the considerably larger community, at 7,109 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 Vespa if…
- Extremely powerful and scalable
- Built-in ML ranking
Watch out for
- Steep learning curve
- Heavy resource needs
Frequently asked questions
Is Blast or Vespa better?
Neither is universally better. Vespa has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Blast and Vespa free and open-source?
Yes. Blast is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vespa under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Blast and Vespa with Docker?
Blast: yes. Vespa: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Blast or Vespa?
Blast has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 4,096 MB for Vespa. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.