Quickwit vs Sonic
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
VS
Sonic
Fast, lightweight schema-less search backend
| Feature | Quickwit | Sonic |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 96 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,670 | ★ 21,349 |
| First released | 2021 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Elasticsearch | Algolia, Elasticsearch |
What are Quickwit and Sonic?
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
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
Quickwit vs Sonic: key differences
Both projects are written in Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Quickwit versus MPL-2.0 for Sonic. Sonic is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Quickwit. Sonic is the more established project (first released 2019), while Quickwit arrived in 2021.
Why pick each one
Choose Quickwit if…
- Very cost effective at scale
- Modern Rust codebase
Watch out for
- Focused on append-only data
Choose Sonic if…
- Tiny resource footprint
- Very fast for autocomplete
Watch out for
- No relevance scoring or filtering
Frequently asked questions
Is Quickwit or Sonic better?
Neither is universally better. Sonic has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Quickwit and Sonic free and open-source?
Yes. Quickwit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Sonic under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Quickwit and Sonic with Docker?
Quickwit: yes. Sonic: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Quickwit or Sonic?
Sonic has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Quickwit. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.