bleve vs tinysearch
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | bleve | tinysearch |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | source, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,228 | ★ 2,972 |
| First released | 2014 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Elasticsearch, Algolia | Algolia |
What are bleve and tinysearch?
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
tinysearch
tinysearch is a lightweight full-text search engine that compiles a static site's content into a small WebAssembly module for client-side search. It is designed for blogs and documentation where a search server would be overkill.
- WebAssembly search module
- No backend required
- Tiny index size
- Client-side full-text search
bleve vs tinysearch: key differences
Bleve is written in Go, while tinysearch is built with Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for bleve versus MIT for tinysearch. Tinysearch is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for bleve. Bleve is the more established project (first released 2014), while tinysearch arrived in 2019. Bleve has the considerably larger community, at 11,228 GitHub stars versus 2,972.
Why pick each one
Choose bleve if…
- No separate server
- Pure Go integration
Watch out for
- Library not turnkey app
- Manual scaling
Choose tinysearch if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Active community (3k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is bleve or tinysearch 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 tinysearch free and open-source?
Yes. bleve is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tinysearch under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run bleve and tinysearch with Docker?
bleve: check the project docs for container support. tinysearch: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, bleve or tinysearch?
tinysearch has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for bleve. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.