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Elasticsearch vs Fess: catalog facts
Elasticsearch	Fess
Freemium Free to download and self-host; Elastic sells a hosted cloud service with a free trial.	Free Free and open source under Apache-2.0; commercial support is available.
Windows, Self-hosted	Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted
Full-text, vector and hybrid search through one API Scales horizontally across a cluster	Crawler, indexer, admin console and search UI included Indexes Office, PDF and archive files from many sources
Running and tuning a cluster takes operational effort Aimed at developers and operators rather than end users	Non-Docker installs need a separate OpenSearch setup Requires Java 21 and server resources
Downloadable app, Self-hosted, Hosted service	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: Apache-2.0
No account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.