Infinity 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 | Infinity | Quickwit |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 89 · Excellent | 93 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C++ | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 4,717 | ★ 11,670 |
| First released | 2024 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Pinecone, Elasticsearch | Splunk, Elasticsearch |
What are Infinity and Quickwit?
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
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
Infinity vs Quickwit: key differences
Infinity is written in C++, while Quickwit is built with Rust. Quickwit is the lighter option, starting around 1,024 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Infinity. Quickwit is the more established project (first released 2021), while Infinity arrived in 2024. Quickwit has the considerably larger community, at 11,670 GitHub stars versus 4,717.
Why pick each one
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++
Choose Quickwit if…
- Very cost effective at scale
- Modern Rust codebase
Watch out for
- Focused on append-only data
Frequently asked questions
Is Infinity or Quickwit better?
Neither is universally better. Quickwit has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Infinity and Quickwit free and open-source?
Yes. Infinity is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Quickwit under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Infinity and Quickwit with Docker?
Infinity: yes. Quickwit: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Infinity or Quickwit?
Quickwit has the smaller minimum footprint at 1,024 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Infinity. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.