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Vespa vs Elasticsearch: catalog facts
Vespa	Elasticsearch
Freemium Free and open source to self-host; Vespa Cloud is a paid service with a free trial.	Freemium Free to download and self-host; Elastic sells a hosted cloud service with a free trial.
Web, Self-hosted	Windows, Self-hosted
Text, vector and hybrid retrieval with ranking in one engine Runs machine-learned models at query time	Full-text, vector and hybrid search through one API Scales horizontally across a cluster
Aimed at engineering teams rather than individual users Larger setup and learning effort than simpler search servers	Running and tuning a cluster takes operational effort Aimed at developers and operators rather than end users
Self-hosted, Hosted service	Downloadable app, Self-hosted, Hosted service
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License not stated
Not stated if an account is needed	No account 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.