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What's the Difference Between Amazon OpenSearch and OpenSearch Serverless?

Compare Amazon OpenSearch and OpenSearch Serverless side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Comparisons
Amazon OpenSearch
OpenSearch Serverless
Category

Analytics, Search & log analytics

Analytics, Serverless Search
Description

Real-time search, observability, and security analytics

Run search and analytics workloads without managing OpenSearch clusters.
Best for
  • Log analytics
  • Full-text search
  • Application monitoring
  • Security analytics
  • Clickstream analytics
  • Log analytics
  • Full-text search
  • Vector search
  • Application monitoring
Key features
  • OpenSearch Serverless
  • Dashboards
  • Anomaly detection
  • Alerting
  • Cross-cluster search
  • No cluster management
  • Auto scaling
  • Vector search
  • Time-series collections
  • Encryption
Pricing model

Pay per instance hour + storage

Pay per OCU-hour + data stored
Free tier

Yes

No
Expert take

“OpenSearch is the right choice when you need full-text search with relevance scoring, log analytics with dashboards, or both in one cluster. OpenSearch Serverless removes capacity planning; for predictable workloads, provisioned clusters with UltraWarm tiering optimize cost.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“OpenSearch Serverless auto-scales compute and storage independently. Choose time-series or search collections based on your access pattern for optimal cost.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon OpenSearch »

Learn more about OpenSearch Serverless »

When to use Amazon OpenSearch or OpenSearch Serverless

Use Amazon OpenSearch when:

  • Log analytics
  • Full-text search
  • Application monitoring
  • Security analytics
  • Clickstream analytics

Learn more about Amazon OpenSearch »

Use OpenSearch Serverless when:

  • Log analytics
  • Full-text search
  • Vector search
  • Application monitoring

Learn more about OpenSearch Serverless »

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