App Search documentation

ℹ️ The future of search projects with Elastic

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We are actively developing new features and capabilities directly in Elasticsearch to help you build powerful search applications. For new users, we strongly recommend using our native Elasticsearch tools, rather than the standalone App Search product.

We have provided a comparison table below to help you understand the differences between the standalone product and our native Elasticsearch tools. We also added a recommendation wizard in the App Search product itself for new users.

For existing users, we’ve also created a an example Python notebook to help you migrate your App Search engines and configurations to Elasticsearch.

Table: App Search (standalone) and Elasticsearch

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Use the following table to compare the standalone App Search product feature set with the native Elasticsearch tools our team are actively developing.

App Search (standalone product) Elasticsearch tools

Overview

Out-of-the-box product. An opinionated solution developed as a user-friendly abstraction on top of Elasticsearch.

Flexible toolkit that works directly with Elasticsearch.

Product status

Supported

Active development

Indexing strategy

Content saved to hidden App Search indexes (managed, opinionated storage) under the "Engines" abstraction

Content saved to Elasticsearch indexes (flexible, familiar Elastic APIs)

User interface and search experience

Pre-built UI and search experience

Build your own customizable search experience using Elastic Search UI

 

 Web crawler

Built-in web crawler

Try the new self-managed Elastic Open Web Crawler that writes directly to Elasticsearch indices

 

Search analytics

Built-in analytics

Track and analyze users' searching and clicking behavior with Behavioral Analytics

 

Search with synonyms

Built-in synonym management

Use the Elasticsearch Synonyms APIs to easily create and manage synonym sets

 

Relevance tuning

Built-in relevance tuning using GUI

Elasticsearch’s Query DSL provides a large set of relevance tools

 

 Curate results

Built-in curation tools

Use Query Rules to customize your search results for queries that match specific criteria and metadata

 

 Credentials and roles

Built-in user management

Elasticsearch provides a comprehensive set of security features, including document-level security and role-based access control

Source code

Closed code

Elasticsearch source code is open: GitHub repository

Machine Learning

Not easily combined with App Search Engines

Leverage all Elasticsearch ML and AI capabilities on your indices Learn more