bleve vs Infinity
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | bleve | Infinity |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 89 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,228 | ★ 4,717 |
| First released | 2014 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch, Algolia | Pinecone, Elasticsearch |
What are bleve and Infinity?
bleve
An embeddable modern full-text search and indexing library that lets developers add search to applications without running a separate server. It supports analyzers, faceting, and scoring out of the box.
- Embeddable index
- Text analyzers
- Faceted search
- Pluggable storage
Infinity
Infinity is an open-source AI-native database built for embedding, full-text and hybrid search with very low latency. It is self-hosted and serves as a high-performance search and retrieval backend.
- AI-native database
- Vector and full-text search
- Hybrid retrieval
- Self-hostable
bleve vs Infinity: key differences
Bleve is written in Go, while Infinity is built with C++. Bleve is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Infinity. Bleve is the more established project (first released 2014), while Infinity arrived in 2024. Bleve has the considerably larger community, at 11,228 GitHub stars versus 4,717. Infinity lists first-class Docker deployment; bleve does not.
Why pick each one
Choose bleve if…
- No separate server
- Pure Go integration
Watch out for
- Library not turnkey app
- Manual scaling
Choose Infinity if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (4.7k GitHub stars)
- Written in C++
Frequently asked questions
Is bleve or Infinity better?
Neither is universally better. bleve has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are bleve and Infinity free and open-source?
Yes. bleve is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Infinity under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run bleve and Infinity with Docker?
bleve: check the project docs for container support. Infinity: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, bleve or Infinity?
bleve has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Infinity. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.