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Meilisearch vs Sonic: catalog facts
Meilisearch	Sonic
Freemium Core engine is free under MIT; enterprise edition features use a separate licence.	Free Free and open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Self-hosted	Linux, Self-hosted
RESTful API that is simple to call from any language Hybrid keyword and AI-based search	Very low memory use compared with Elasticsearch Schema-less, with no index mapping to define
Some enterprise features are under a non-MIT licence Aimed at developers, not end users	Returns identifiers, not stored documents, so a separate database is needed Uses its own protocol rather than a familiar HTTP API
Downloadable app, Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: MIT	License: MPL-2.0
No account needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026

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