Free, open, and here’s why

Openness, transparency, and collaboration are at the heart of all that we do.

But first, what do we mean by free and open?

  • Free

    Our products can be used at no cost. Our users can get started — or even build an entire solution — without ever having to pay for anything.

  • Open

    Our code is housed in public repositories with a commitment to an open development process and transparent and direct engagement with our community.

From roots in open source

Founded as an open source project, Elasticsearch didn’t become what it is today by hiding away until the code was perfect. Building on top of Apache Lucene, an open source search engine library, Elasticsearch made it easy for developers to quickly build search functionality into their applications and to take search technology in new directions.

Since day one, our community and customers have been able to

  • view our open code
  • make pull requests to update our code
  • modify the code for their own use case(s) and to make sure it fits perfectly into their own environment(s)
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To building a free and open model

Open code not only ensures that Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack evolve to best suit the needs of our community and customers, but also ensures that our community and customers can innovate, evolve, and optimize their own solutions.

And, we haven’t had to imagine what would happen if several thousand people innovated on top of one codebase — we’ve experienced it. New features and new functionality have emerged as a community of users with a diverse set of use cases evolved our code to meet their unique needs. Security gets hardened as more (and more) users scrutinize the code. Reliability and resiliency become more established with rigorous testing across various architectures and environments.

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And delivering value for everyone

Whether it’s a developer building out their first search-powered solution or an executive seeking to transform data into actionable insights, Elastic’s free and open model delivers value.

Developers try our products and quickly transform a proof-of-concept into a large-scale deployment powering mission-critical systems.

Decision makers and executives take notice of what their developers are doing and turn to Elastic to help connect people with content that matters, solve for increasingly complex IT environments, and protect their digital ecosystems.

No matter who you are or what you’re working on, Elastic believes free and open can deliver amazing results where value is the common denominator.

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About - Why free and open - Department of Work & Pensions

"It was easy to get started using the Elastic Stack for testing purposes. Not only that, the Elastic Stack also proved to be easy to use and scale once in production, and was also within cost constraints — ensuring efficiency and value for money."

Department of Work & Pensions

We believe in free and open

Even though we know that the free and open path isn’t always easy, it’s the best way to develop software and ensure ongoing success for our products, our company, and our community.

We make our code available in public repositories. We contribute to open source projects like Apache Lucene. We engage with and accept pull requests from you, our users. And we’re committed to supporting and catalyzing your growth.

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And we believe that community is more than code

Our community is part of Elastic’s identity. When our community interacts on forums, organizes meetups, and gives feedback, it fosters collaboration that goes beyond the exchange of code.

  • Community events

    Join a meetup or conference to see users sharing knowledge about Elastic technology all around the world.

  • Get in touch

    Find advice or lend a helping hand. Ask your most burning questions about all things Elastic on Discuss or chat with us on Slack.

Free and open solutions — only from Elastic

  • Search everything, anywhere with Elastic Enterprise Search for free

  • Observability

    Observability without limits, for free

  • Security

    Detect threats with the free and open capabilities of Elastic Security

Spin up a cluster, download the latest version, or check out our free training materials