Amazon OpenSearch Service is not Elasticsearch

The Amazon OpenSearch Service (formerly Amazon Elasticsearch Service) is not Elasticsearch and is not a partnership with Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch. Amazon’s OpenSearch Service is based on an older, forked version of Elasticsearch and offers a fraction of the functionality, choice, and support available directly from Elastic.

Choose the Elasticsearch service, the official offering from Elastic. It delivers Elasticsearch, Kibana, and the complete Elastic experience, within AWS. Rest easy knowing that Elastic’s search expertise is backing your deployments with security updates, solutions, and support.

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The Elastic advantage

Work with the creators of Elasticsearch to unlock the full value of the Elastic Search Platform.

  • Ready-to-use solutions

    Get to value faster with built-in Enterprise Search, Observability, and Security solutions.

    Learn how OLX reduced time to value and increased coverage with Elastic Security.

  • Hybrid and multi-cloud by design

    Get a unified Elastic experience across any public cloud, in a hybrid mode, or on-premises.

    Learn why InfoTrack moved from Amazon OpenSearch Service to Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud.

  • All inclusive search portfolio

    Access out-of-the-box analytics, web crawler, AI/ML, and data processing capabilities.

    Learn how Quorum Software achieved better insights and advanced analytics with Elastic.

  • Community and access to experts

    Get access to the readily available talent pool, integrations, and collaborative community.

    Learn how Sovren rapidly moved to a cloud-first model and accelerated product development with Elastic.

Elasticsearch vs. Amazon OpenSearch Service

What to consider?

Elasticsearch

Amazon OpenSearch

Cloud Provider Flexibility

True Multi-cloud Flexibility

Cloud agnostic and flexible deployment options across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with commercially supported self-managed and service options.

Limited deployment options; available as a service only on AWS.

Built-in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Native ML Integration

Out-of-the-box integrations and pre-configured solutions that use ML and specific models allow customers to start ingesting data to quickly gain initial insights.

Elastic ML supports the import of any PyTorch model from Hugging Face, supporting a broad range of custom or advanced ML use cases.

Separate plugin

AWS OpenSearch supports ingestion of machine learning models only for text embedding use cases. Limited functionality when used with solution plug-ins.

Cross cluster search (CCS) and Cross cluster replication (CCR)

Search Globally Distributed Clusters

CCS and CCR on Elasticsearch allow searching across globally distributed clusters, whether self-managed, hybrid or across cloud service providers, enabling low-latency search for all use cases.

Limited; AWS OpenSearch CCS and CCR only supports clusters hosted by AWS OpenSearch, and does not support hybrid or multi-cloud. No support for custom dictionaries or SQL; No support for M3 or burstable (T2 and T3) instances.

Vector Search

Native integration

Optimized for scale, performance and hybrid search; Simplified semantic search with a single endpoint while collapsing multiple steps in a single API call; Making vector search capabilities available to any developer without becoming an AI expert or relying on data science teams.

Separate plugin

Multi-step process requiring advanced memory management, specifying algorithms and configuring index settings for basic operation.

Application Performance Monitoring and full stack observability

Integrated APM

Elastic APM is available as a ready-to-use feature within the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to easily analyze logs, metrics and traces in a unified manner, and enabling customers to view the performance of an application in its entirety.

OpenSearch cannot deliver a full single pane of glass view for observability.

Customers are required to use a separate tool, like AWS X-Ray or other third-party tools, to analyze traces, necessitating extra time and effort to configure additional tools to gain these insights. This disrupts troubleshooting workflows

Elastic SIEM for Security

Native Security

Elastic SIEM is available as a ready-to-use feature with the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to have a unified approach to security. 

Customers can use Elastic SIEM OOTB for cloud security posture management needs. Elastic SIEM allows customers to interactively monitor data, establish a holistic view of activity and prioritize potential threats.

OpenSearch does not come with built-in SIEM capability, so customers need to use additional services or engage a separate third party for their security needs.

Search Specific Capabilities

Faster Time to Startup

The Elasticsearch Platform comes with pre-built tooling and UIs to accelerate search implementation.

It includes a ready-to-use web crawler for easy data ingestion, and a workplace search UI to easily implement an internal search solution.

AWS OpenSearch does not include pre-built tools for search, like a web crawler or an internal search solution. Customers must purchase a separate service to use and benefit from these tools.

What to consider?

Cloud Provider Flexibility

Built-in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Cross cluster search (CCS) and Cross cluster replication (CCR)

Vector Search

Application Performance Monitoring and full stack observability

Elastic SIEM for Security

Search Specific Capabilities

Elasticsearch

Amazon OpenSearch

True Multi-cloud Flexibility

Cloud agnostic and flexible deployment options across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with commercially supported self-managed and service options.

Limited deployment options; available as a service only on AWS.

Native ML Integration

Out-of-the-box integrations and pre-configured solutions that use ML and specific models allow customers to start ingesting data to quickly gain initial insights.

Elastic ML supports the import of any PyTorch model from Hugging Face, supporting a broad range of custom or advanced ML use cases.

Separate plugin

AWS OpenSearch supports ingestion of machine learning models only for text embedding use cases. Limited functionality when used with solution plug-ins.

Search Globally Distributed Clusters

CCS and CCR on Elasticsearch allow searching across globally distributed clusters, whether self-managed, hybrid or across cloud service providers, enabling low-latency search for all use cases.

Limited; AWS OpenSearch CCS and CCR only supports clusters hosted by AWS OpenSearch, and does not support hybrid or multi-cloud. No support for custom dictionaries or SQL; No support for M3 or burstable (T2 and T3) instances.

Native integration

Optimized for scale, performance and hybrid search; Simplified semantic search with a single endpoint while collapsing multiple steps in a single API call; Making vector search capabilities available to any developer without becoming an AI expert or relying on data science teams.

Separate plugin

Multi-step process requiring advanced memory management, specifying algorithms and configuring index settings for basic operation.

Integrated APM

Elastic APM is available as a ready-to-use feature within the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to easily analyze logs, metrics and traces in a unified manner, and enabling customers to view the performance of an application in its entirety.

OpenSearch cannot deliver a full single pane of glass view for observability.

Customers are required to use a separate tool, like AWS X-Ray or other third-party tools, to analyze traces, necessitating extra time and effort to configure additional tools to gain these insights. This disrupts troubleshooting workflows

Native Security

Elastic SIEM is available as a ready-to-use feature with the Elasticsearch Platform, allowing customers to have a unified approach to security. 

Customers can use Elastic SIEM OOTB for cloud security posture management needs. Elastic SIEM allows customers to interactively monitor data, establish a holistic view of activity and prioritize potential threats.

OpenSearch does not come with built-in SIEM capability, so customers need to use additional services or engage a separate third party for their security needs.

Faster Time to Startup

The Elasticsearch Platform comes with pre-built tooling and UIs to accelerate search implementation.

It includes a ready-to-use web crawler for easy data ingestion, and a workplace search UI to easily implement an internal search solution.

AWS OpenSearch does not include pre-built tools for search, like a web crawler or an internal search solution. Customers must purchase a separate service to use and benefit from these tools.

Search-powered solutions

Adopt ready-to-use solutions for your search, observability, and security needs.

  • Elastic Enterprise Search

    Elastic Enterprise Search

    Build applications using flexible tools, robust APIs, and the trusted power of Elasticsearch. Use pre-built search solutions for enterprise needs like workplace search, application search, and customer support.

  • Elastic Observability

    Elastic Observability

    Apply search and visualization to logs, metrics, APM traces, and uptime statistics for unified end-to-end visibility into your technology ecosystem.

  • Elastic Security

    Elastic Security

    Address your security needs for SIEM, SOAR, threat intelligence, XDR, endpoint security, and cloud security, so your analysts can use the power of search and visualization to prevent, detect, and respond to threats.

Savings, deployment flexibility, and search innovations

Deployment, subscription, and purchasing options, so you get what you want.

  • Cost effective storage options with data tiers

    Elastic gives you the ability to classify and store your data in a way that delivers a balance between performance and cost savings. Save money with data tiers and searchable snapshots.

    Leverage hot, warm, and cold, and frozen data tiers, and searchable snapshots to search for data inside Elasticsearch, as well as data residing in cloud-based object storage.

  • A unified search experience across locations

    Unify search experiences with capabilities like cross-cluster search and cross-cluster replication. Both of these capabilities allow federated search and analytics across clusters, cloud providers, and regions, while retaining parts of the data on-premises, or in a specific preferred cloud provider, or region.

  • Flexible and open ML capabilities

    Use the Elastic Search Platform to natively run ML-powered models (like running Google’s BERT model for natural language processing), and as an environment to import and run custom models (like models published on Hugging Face). Easily experiment with purpose-built or third-party ML models, as you incorporate AI/ML powered capabilities into your data analytics use cases.

  • Commercially supported self-managed offering

    Elastic gives you the flexibility to create and run deployments where and how you need them to meet your business objectives — whether public cloud, private cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid, or on-premises.

    Elastic gives you the flexibility to purchase and manage your own search implementation, which is useful for use cases with specific regulatory and data residency requirements.

  • Tiered subscription levels

    Get access to the features you want, and the level of technical support that meets the needs of your business. Easily switch between Standard, Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise subscription levels without having to contact sales.

  • Flexible purchasing options

    Purchase from us, or through your preferred cloud marketplace (AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure). Marketplace purchases benefit from any discounts you may have negotiated with your cloud provider, and usage accrues toward your cloud spending commitment.