Tantivy
Ranked 2 of 4 full-text search libraries by recommenders
Rust full-text search library that people pick over SQLite for BM25 search and use as the search engine in their own tools.
Rust full-text search library that people pick over SQLite for BM25 search and use as the search engine in their own tools.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Chosen as go-to search engine
“SQLite + sqlite-vec + Tantivy + a tiny embedding model will stay as my go to.”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop” “If we ever add persistent cross-session indexing, Tantivy would be the move.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Context Mode – 315 KB of MCP output becomes 5.4 KB in Claude Code”
Other full-text search libraries people recommend
The three most recommended other full-text search libraries, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Lucene | 12 | 3 | 80% | 6 | — | Approved |
| TantivyThis page | 8 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| PHP-fts | 6 | 0 | 100% | 1 | — | — |
| Lunr.js | 5 | 1 | 83% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
5 of the 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“SQLite + sqlite-vec + Tantivy + a tiny embedding model will stay as my go to.”
“If we ever add persistent cross-session indexing, Tantivy would be the move.”
“tantivy's BM25 search is faster, more expressive, and more scalable than SQLite”
“We rebased recently, and we'll likely talk about those improvements as part of our 0.21.x release.”
“I absolutely love that this uses tantivy.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.