Elastic connectors

A connector is a type of Elastic integration that syncs data from an original data source to an Elasticsearch index. Connectors enable you to create searchable, read-only replicas of your data sources.

Connectors extract the original files, records, or objects; and transforms them into Elasticsearch documents.

Many connectors are available out-of-the-box on Elastic Cloud. You can also access the source code for these (and additional) connectors, and run them on your own infrastructure.

Native connectors are available directly within your Elastic Cloud deployment, as a managed service. No additional infrastructure is required.

See Native connectors (managed service) for details on how to configure and use native connectors.

Connector clients enable you to run connectors locally on your own infrastructure. This means you can try out new connectors before they are available natively within Elastic Cloud, and/or customize existing connectors.

See Connector clients (self-managed) for details on how to deploy connector clients.

All Elastic connectors are built using our Python connector framework. The source code is available in the elastic/connectors repository on GitHub.

The connector framework is available for developers to customize existing connector clients or build their own connectors. Refer to Elastic connector framework for details.

The following diagram provides a high-level overview of the Elastic connectors offering and some key facts.