Typesense
Shares rank 26 of 38 search engines by recommenders
Open source search engine offering hybrid keyword and vector search, with an easy-to-start managed service people recommend.
Open source search engine offering hybrid keyword and vector search, with an easy-to-start managed service people recommend.
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: 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: 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
Hybrid keyword and vector search
“Combines vector with bm25 and all the extras you get from a trad search tool like Algolia.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “We built a persistent agent memory layer on Elasticsearch with 0.89 recall” “open source Algolia, which can do hybrid search and a number of other fancy things”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Is Grep All You Need? How Agent Harnesses Reshape Agentic Search” “Hence why something like Typesense hybrid search can still be useful.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Agent memory as a file format” Open source Algolia alternative
“Combines vector with bm25 and all the extras you get from a trad search tool like Algolia.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “We built a persistent agent memory layer on Elasticsearch with 0.89 recall” “open source Algolia, which can do hybrid search and a number of other fancy things”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Is Grep All You Need? How Agent Harnesses Reshape Agentic Search” Easy to start and use
“It was very easy to start with the reasonably priced managed service”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)” “is easy to use and is hella fast”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “PostgreSQL for Everything” Many features out of the box
“Combines vector with bm25 and all the extras you get from a trad search tool like Algolia.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “We built a persistent agent memory layer on Elasticsearch with 0.89 recall” “highly recommend using typesense as the base for that, so many great features”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Leaf Makes Markdown Readable Inside the Terminal”
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 |
| TypesenseThis page | 8 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Sqlite text searching is leaving a lot on the table compared to a Typesense based setup imo”
“Hence why something like Typesense hybrid search can still be useful.”
“is easy to use and is hella fast”
“You want more than just vector db, use something like Typesense”
“I use Typesense and am happy.”
“Combines vector with bm25 and all the extras you get from a trad search tool like Algolia.”
“open source Algolia, which can do hybrid search and a number of other fancy things”
“highly recommend using typesense as the base for that, so many great features”
“tools like Meilisearch, Typesense make this more accessible now”
“do the same basic stuff as e.g. Meilisearch, Manticore or Typesense”
“It was very easy to start with the reasonably priced managed service”
“Try loading up some disease definitions into Typesense and presenting a more free-form text search”
“it's stunningly competent at figuring out exactly what search queries to use across which collections”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.