Elasticsearch plugins

This section contains reference information for Elasticsearch plugins: what each plugin does and how to configure it. The plugins available to you and the way you install them depend on where Elasticsearch runs. For the installation and management steps that apply to your deployment type, refer to Plugins and custom configuration files.

Plugins are a way to enhance the core Elasticsearch functionality in a custom manner. They range from adding custom mapping types, custom analyzers, native scripts, custom discovery and more.

Plugins contain JAR files, but may also contain scripts and config files, and must be installed on every node in the cluster. After installation, each node must be restarted before the plugin becomes visible.

Plugins are grouped by the functionality they add to Elasticsearch:

API extension plugins

Add new APIs or features, usually to do with search or mapping.

Analysis plugins

Add new analyzers, tokenizers, token filters, or character filters.

Discovery plugins

Add new seed hosts providers that extend the cluster formation module.

Mapper plugins

Add new field data types.

Snapshot/restore repository plugins

Add snapshot repositories backed by the cloud or by distributed file systems.

Store plugins

Offer alternatives to the default Lucene stores.

Authentication plugins

Extend the built-in authentication realms.

Integrations are not plugins, but external tools or modules that make it easier to work with Elasticsearch.

Plugins come from two sources:

Core Plugins

This category identifies plugins that are part of Elasticsearch project. Delivered at the same time as Elasticsearch, their version number always matches the version number of Elasticsearch itself. These plugins are maintained by the Elastic team with the appreciated help of amazing community members (for open source plugins). Issues and bug reports can be reported on the Github project page.

Community contributed

This category identifies plugins that are external to the Elasticsearch project. They are provided by individual developers or private companies and have their own licenses as well as their own versioning system. Issues and bug reports can usually be reported on the community plugin’s web site.

If you want to write your own plugin, refer to Creating an Elasticsearch plugin.