Sonic 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 | Sonic | tinysearch |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,349 | ★ 2,972 |
| First released | 2019 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Algolia, Elasticsearch | Algolia |
What are Sonic and tinysearch?
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
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
Sonic vs tinysearch: key differences
Both projects are written in Rust. Licensing differs — MPL-2.0 for Sonic versus MIT for tinysearch. Sonic is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 64 MB for tinysearch. Sonic has the considerably larger community, at 21,349 GitHub stars versus 2,972. Sonic lists first-class Docker deployment; tinysearch does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Sonic if…
- Tiny resource footprint
- Very fast for autocomplete
Watch out for
- No relevance scoring or filtering
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 Sonic or tinysearch 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 Sonic and tinysearch free and open-source?
Yes. Sonic is licensed under MPL-2.0 and tinysearch under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Sonic and tinysearch with Docker?
Sonic: yes. tinysearch: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, Sonic or tinysearch?
Sonic has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 64 MB for tinysearch. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.