Manticore Search
Shares rank 28 of 38 search engines by recommenders
Fast, lightweight search engine that runs as a single binary and uses fewer resources than Elasticsearch. Critics say the front page gives no reason to switch and the auto-embedding support was poor.
Fast, lightweight search engine that runs as a single binary and uses fewer resources than Elasticsearch. Critics say the front page gives no reason to switch and the auto-embedding support was poor.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 70%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster and lighter than Elasticsearch
“Manticore is really performant and uses far fewer resources than similar search engines like elastic.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “KNN early termination in Manticore Search” “Manticore Search was finally chosen because it was more performant, with better search results.”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “PostgreSQL for Everything” “it's much more lightweight”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “We built a persistent agent memory layer on Elasticsearch with 0.89 recall” Replaces bloated search alternatives
“more modern alternatives and have just gotten more and more bloated”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How are you doing RAG locally?” “now Manticore is the perfect replacement”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Manticore Search 27.1.5: Auth, sharding, conversational and faster vector search”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Off-putting site and user-hostile behavior
“This is user-hostile behavior, even if they didn't want to admit to users that the auto-embedding support was poor.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Better Vector Search for Long Documents: Chunking Inside Manticore Search” “This site def makes me not want to use Manticore at all.”
Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Manticore Search 27.1.5: Auth, sharding, conversational and faster vector search”
Other search engines people recommend
The four most recommended other search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kagi | 732 | 234 | 76% | 13 | 2 yrs106 owners | Approved |
| Google Search | 315 | 1,039 | 23% | 12 | 20 yrs25 owners | — |
| DuckDuckGo | 286 | 204 | 58% | 12 | 3.5 yrs47 owners | — |
| Hister | 81 | 9 | 90% | 9 | 2 mo17 owners | Approved |
| Manticore SearchThis page | 7 | 3 | 70% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“This is user-hostile behavior, even if they didn't want to admit to users that the auto-embedding support was poor.”
“Manticore Search was finally chosen because it was more performant, with better search results.”
“now Manticore is the perfect replacement”
“This site def makes me not want to use Manticore at all.”
“it's much more lightweight”
“Manticore is really performant and uses far fewer resources than similar search engines like elastic.”
“Goodbye manticore if this works.”
“found fuzzy search in Manticore to be straightforward and pretty good”
“more modern alternatives and have just gotten more and more bloated”
“it is a single binary rather than the complexity of ES/OS, JVM etc”
“Looking at their front page I don't see any compelling reason to switch”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.