Apache Lucene vs. Azure AI Search

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Lucene
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Apache Lucene is an open source and free text search engine library written in Java. It is a technology suitable for applications that requires full-text search, and is available cross-platform.
$0
per month
Azure Cognitive Search
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Azure AI Search (formerly Azure Cognitive Search) is enterprise search as a service, from Microsoft.
$0.10
Per Hour
Pricing
Apache LuceneAzure AI Search
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$0.101
Per Hour
Standard S1
$0.336
Per Hour
Standard S2
$1.344
Per Hour
Standard S3
$2.688
Per Hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache LuceneAzure Cognitive Search
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA free and open source product.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache LuceneAzure AI Search
Considered Both Products
Apache Lucene

No answer on this topic

Azure Cognitive Search
Chose Azure AI Search
As I've mentioned, the biggest competitor to Azure Search is actually Azure SQL Database. It doesn't have as many features, but it's more economical and most .Net applications will have one already. As long as you can arrive at a schema and ranking strategy, it's a "good …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Apache LuceneAzure AI Search
Small Businesses
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Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Guru
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache LuceneAzure AI Search
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache LuceneAzure AI Search
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Lucene is a perfect text search implementation where the heap space usage needs to be kept to its minimal. It also enables search based on various search fields and most importantly the search and index process can happen simultaneously. The only scenario where it might be less appropriate would be when the index size grows too big. We have witnessed few scalable issues where the search would take a while when the index size is too large.
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Microsoft
Incredibly robust software for an enterprise organization to plug into their application. If you have a full development resource team at your disposal, this is great software and I highly recommend it. Largely, however, you won't be able to use this prior to the enterprise level. It's just too complicated and cumbersome of a product.
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Pros
Apache
  • We found Apache Lucene to be extremely performant in querying large amounts of data and retrieving the correct files based on the metadata provided.
  • The online community offers great support for the product. Even though it is an open source tool, it is not difficult to find help online for it.
  • When we were creating a proof of concept application, we found that the software worked just as well, while being run locally on a resource-limited PC.
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Microsoft
  • Azure Search provides a fully-managed service for loading, indexing, and querying content.
  • Azure Search has an easy C# SDK that allows you to implement loading and retrieving data from the service very easy. Any developer with some Microsoft experience should feel immediate familiarity.
  • Azure Search has a robust set of abilities around slicing and presenting the data during a search, such as narrowing by geospatial data and providing an auto-complete capabilities via "Suggesters".
  • Azure Search has one-of-a-kind "Cognitive Search" capabilities that enable running AI algorithms over data to enrich it before it is stored into the service. For example, one could automatically do a sentiment analysis when ingesting the data and store that as one of the searchable fields on the content.
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Cons
Apache
  • User interface for setup and maintenance would be helpful.
  • Easier cloud/cluster setup.
  • Better, centralized documentation.
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Microsoft
  • It's an enterprise level product so you need to have the budget for it.
  • Challenging-to-impossible for a non-technical administrator to implement.
  • It further locks you into Microsoft's ecosystem and doesn't play well with non-Microsoft software. Depending on your point of view, this can be a pro or a con.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
The search and index performance of [Apache] Lucene is excellent and the quality of results is good, if not better. For implementing it with small scale applications it is a no brainer, Lucene is the best and most cost effective solution. Learning curve is not too steep either.
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Microsoft
As I've mentioned, the biggest competitor to Azure Search is actually Azure SQL Database. It doesn't have as many features, but it's more economical and most .Net applications will have one already. As long as you can arrive at a schema and ranking strategy, it's a "good enough" solution. There are a variety of search technologies (Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch) that implement a search service. Some of them are even open source, though I would only say "free" if you do not value your time. They most likely need to be hosted via Container (or VM if you're old school), so you're incurring DevOps costs to not only set them up but monitor and maintain them yourself.
If you're already on AWS, there is almost no reason to use Azure Search. Unless you're already multi-cloud, desperately need the cognitive abilities, and don't mind a potential performance hit from looking across datacenters (hey, it could happen), you should probably just use Amazon CloudSearch.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Being an open source project we did not have to pay any licensing fees for using Apache Lucene. It has greatly improved our search functionality in our web apps.
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Microsoft
  • Our internal market research illustrates that users are finding their desired information faster on account of autosuggest.
  • Time spent on checkout page (for conversions) is significantly decreased.
  • Clicks required on checkout page (for conversions) is significantly decreased.
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ScreenShots

Apache Lucene Screenshots

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