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.
Not the right match-up?
Sonic
Fast, lightweight schema-less search backend
VS
tinysearch
Tiny WebAssembly-powered static site search
| Feature | Sonic | tinysearch |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 21,299 | ★ 2,953 |
| First released | 2019 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Algolia, Elasticsearch | Algolia |
Why pick each one
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.