​ Search capabilities

Meilisearch indexes your content and makes it accessible to both humans and AI. Here’s everything it can do.

​ Search capabilities

​ Full-text search

Lightning-fast keyword search with typo tolerance and customizable relevancy.

Feature Description
Sub-50ms responses Fast search regardless of dataset size
Typo tolerance Get relevant results even with spelling mistakes
Ranking rules 6 default rules plus custom ranking
Ranking score Relevancy scores with optional detailed breakdown
Synonyms Define equivalent terms for better recall
Stop words Ignore common words like “the” or “and”
Distinct attribute Deduplicate results by a specific field
Prefix search Results update as users type
Matching strategy Control how query terms are matched: last, all, or frequency
Phrase search Use double quotes to search for an exact phrase
Negative search Exclude terms from results using the minus operator
Placeholder search Return all results when the query is empty

​ Querying and result formatting

Feature Description
Highlighting Emphasize query matches in results with customizable tags
Cropping Return only the relevant portion of long text fields
Matches position Get byte positions and lengths of matched terms
Search cutoff Set a maximum time limit for search queries
Tokenization Customize how queries are broken into tokens, with custom separators and dictionaries

Semantic and hybrid search using vector embeddings for meaning-based results.

Feature Description
Hybrid search Combine keyword and semantic search
Embedders OpenAI, Hugging Face, Cohere, Mistral, Voyage, Gemini, Cloudflare, Ollama, and custom REST
Similar documents Find related content automatically
Image search Search images with multimodal embeddings
Multi-embedder Multiple embedding models on the same document
User-provided vectors Bring your own pre-generated embeddings

Let AI agents and chat interfaces use your search data, with LLM integration.

Feature Description
AI SDK Give agents a Meilisearch search tool with the Vercel AI SDK
Chats API Engine-managed conversational search via the direct /chats API
LLM providers OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Mistral, and vLLM
Streaming responses Stream chat responses in real time
Chat workspaces Configure chat settings per index

​ Personalization

Feature Description
User preference ranking Re-rank results based on individual user preferences using AI embeddings
Real-time adaptation Adjust results as user preferences evolve

​ Filtering and faceting

Refine search results with powerful filters and build faceted navigation.

Feature Description
Filters Filter by any attribute with complex expressions (AND/OR)
Facets Build faceted navigation interfaces
Facet types AND/OR operators, numeric, boolean, and date facets
Sorting Sort results by any field
Geo search Geo radius, bounding box, geo sorting, and distance calculation

​ Multi-search and federation

Query multiple indexes in a single request for complex search scenarios.

Feature Description
Multi-search Query multiple indexes at once
Federated search Merge results from multiple sources with configurable weights

​ Scaling

Scale Meilisearch horizontally across multiple instances or optimize resource usage on a single node.

Feature Description
Sharding Distribute documents across multiple instances for horizontal scaling
Replication Replicate data across multiple instances for high availability
Remote federation Federate search across multiple Meilisearch instances
Memory mapping Efficient memory usage through memory-mapped storage

​ Database

​ Document database

Feature Description
Schemaless Index documents without a predefined schema
Documents Add, replace, update, and delete documents
Delete by filter Delete documents matching a filter expression
Update by function Partial updates to documents using functions
Searchable attributes Configure which fields are searchable and their priority
Displayed attributes Control which fields are returned in results
Filterable attributes Define which fields can be used in filters
Sortable attributes Define which fields can be used for sorting
Index swap Swap indexes to perform updates without downtime

​ Vector database

Feature Description
Similar documents Find semantically similar documents using vector embeddings
Binary quantization Compress vectors to save storage
DiskANN Disk-based approximate nearest neighbors for large datasets
Auto embedding Automatically generate embeddings without manual input

​ Platform features

​ Security

Protect your data with API keys and multi-tenant access control.

Feature Description
API keys Admin, search, and chat key types for different access levels
Tenant tokens Secure multi-tenant applications with document-level access control
Search rules Restrict which documents users can access

​ Tasks and monitoring

Monitor indexing operations and receive notifications.

Feature Description
Task management Track and manage async operations
Batches Automatic task batching for efficient processing
Webhooks Get notified when tasks complete
Diff indexing Only index differences between datasets

​ Analytics (Cloud)

Track search behavior and optimize relevancy with built-in analytics.

Feature Description
Search analytics Monitor search patterns, no-result rates, and top queries
Click tracking Track which results users engage with
Metrics reference Click-through rate, conversion rate, average click position
Monitoring Search latency, indexing latency, bandwidth, and API health

​ Pagination

Feature Description
Pagination Offset/limit and cursor-based pagination

​ Language support

Meilisearch provides optimized support for many languages:

  • Latin-based languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, etc.
  • CJK: Chinese, Japanese, Korean with specialized tokenization
  • RTL languages: Hebrew, Arabic
  • Others: Thai, Greek, and more

See full language support →

​ Cloud features

These features are available exclusively on Meilisearch Cloud.

Feature Description
Crawler Crawl web pages with JS rendering, DocSearch mode, and schema extraction
Search preview Visual search interface with filtering, sorting, and document CRUD
Teams Organize projects and members into team workspaces
Enterprise SSO/SCIM SAML 2.0 SSO and automated user provisioning
Autoscale disk Automatically scale storage as data grows
Automatic backups Scheduled backups for data safety
One-click upgrade Upgrade Meilisearch version with a single click
Up to 99.999% SLA Industry-leading service level agreement

​ Self-hosting

Feature Description
Configuration CLI flags and environment variables
Snapshots Full binary copies for fast restoration
Dumps Portable JSON exports for migration
Master key Secure your instance with a master key

​ Integration options

Option Description
REST API Direct HTTP integration
Official SDKs 10+ language SDKs
Frameworks Laravel, Rails, Strapi, Symfony