Sonic vs Toshi
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Sonic | Toshi |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 79 · Good |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,349 | ★ 4,256 |
| First released | 2019 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Algolia, Elasticsearch | Elasticsearch |
What are Sonic and Toshi?
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
Toshi
Toshi is a self-hosted full-text search server that exposes an Elasticsearch-like JSON REST API on top of the Tantivy search engine. It targets developers who want a simple, fast search service in Rust.
- JSON REST API
- Tantivy-backed indexing
- Fast Rust core
- Simple to run
Sonic vs Toshi: key differences
Both projects are written in Rust. Licensing differs — MPL-2.0 for Sonic versus MIT for Toshi. Sonic is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Toshi. Sonic has the considerably larger community, at 21,349 GitHub stars versus 4,256.
Why pick each one
Choose Sonic if…
- Tiny resource footprint
- Very fast for autocomplete
Watch out for
- No relevance scoring or filtering
Choose Toshi if…
- Lightweight search server
- Familiar API style
Watch out for
- Less mature than ES
- Smaller feature set
Frequently asked questions
Is Sonic or Toshi 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 Toshi free and open-source?
Yes. Sonic is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Toshi under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Sonic and Toshi with Docker?
Sonic: yes. Toshi: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Sonic or Toshi?
Sonic has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Toshi. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.