Elastic

Elastic is a search-powered platform built around Elasticsearch, Kibana, and data-ingestion tools. Its official documentation covers Elasticsearch search/vector/RAG, Observability telemetry, and Security detection and response. These solutions run as Cloud Serverless, Cloud Hosted, or self-managed software, with AI capabilities varying by deployment and subscription.

✨ Key Features

• Full-text and lexical search — Index structured and unstructured data and query it with Elasticsearch and BM25-based search.
• Vector and semantic search — Store embeddings, use semantic retrieval and hybrid search, and build RAG applications.
• Data ingestion — Collect data through Elastic Agent, Beats, Logstash, connectors, and OpenTelemetry support.
• Kibana analytics — Explore data with Discover, dashboards, field statistics, maps, developer tools, and alerting.
• Observability — Monitor applications, logs, metrics, traces, service maps, SLOs, and infrastructure through APM and related tools.
• Security analytics — Use detection rules, SIEM workflows, alerting, case management, endpoint protection, and cloud-security posture capabilities.
• AI Assistant and Agent Builder — Use AI-guided security/observability help and create agents with tools, chat interfaces, and custom configurations where licensed.

💳 Pricing

Free access applies to the self-managed core, with infrastructure operated at your own cost. Elastic Cloud is paid and offers a limited trial; self-managed licensing is separate from cloud billing. Current public Hosted pricing lists these levels, with resource-based charges and a 14-day trial:

• Standard — From US$99/month based on the example production configuration of 120 GB storage across 2 availability zones; includes the managed Elasticsearch platform, API/query tools, AutoOps monitoring, core search, security, and observability capabilities.
• Gold — From US$114/month on the same example; adds reporting, third-party alerting actions, Watcher, multi-stack monitoring, and expanded security workflows.
• Platinum — From US$131/month; adds advanced security, machine learning, cross-cluster replication, semantic/vector search models, and enhanced support with a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA.
• Enterprise — From US$184/month; adds searchable snapshots, Maps Server, cross-cluster search, GPU inference, AI Assistant, Workflows, Agent Builder, advanced capabilities, and premium support.

Elastic Cloud Serverless uses usage-based billing for Search, Observability, and Security projects, measured in Elastic Consumption Units; Workflows and Agent Builder may incur separate usage charges. Free and open self-managed downloads provide the core stack; Platinum adds advanced security, ML, and high availability, while Enterprise requires the relevant license. Cloud pricing varies by provider, region, resources, transfer, snapshots, and support; the calculator and checkout are authoritative.

⚖️ Alternatives Compared

🎯 Use Cases

• Application search — Build fast search experiences over documents, products, logs, or structured records.
• Semantic search and RAG — Combine embeddings and lexical retrieval to ground AI answers in an organization’s data.
• Log and metric monitoring — Centralize telemetry and investigate application or infrastructure health.
• APM and incident response — Trace requests, correlate service behavior, set SLOs, and investigate alerts.
• SIEM and threat detection — Detect suspicious activity, manage cases, and coordinate security response.
• Endpoint and cloud protection — Collect host data and monitor cloud workloads and posture where licensed.
• Data exploration and dashboards — Analyze operational or business data in Kibana and share visualizations.
• AI agent development — Create tool-using agents with Agent Builder and search-backed context.
• Self-hosted regulated workloads — Run the stack in private, public, or air-gapped infrastructure when deployment control matters.