Yes, Algolia has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans. The free plan includes 10,000 search requests per month included, 100,000 records included, and 10,000 recommend requests per month included. FreeTier.co estimates the free tier at about $1.00/mo, and no credit card is required to sign up.
About
Algolia is an AI search and retrieval platform that helps businesses deliver fast, relevant discovery experiences across websites, apps, and internal tools.
It combines keyword search, AI-powered retrieval, recommendations, personalization, analytics, and browse experiences to support product discovery, documentation search, and other customer-facing use cases. The platform also includes developer tools, integrations, data enrichment and transformation capabilities, and infrastructure features designed to help teams launch and scale search experiences efficiently.
- AI search and retrieval for product discovery, site search, and documentation search
- Generative and agentic AI experiences built on retrieval-augmented generation
- Recommendations, personalization, analytics, and merchandising capabilities
- Developer APIs, UI components, integrations, and data preparation tools
- Global infrastructure and security features for production deployments
Free Tier Value
This free tier is a capped monthly starter offer with no credit card required, so it has real value but not unlimited use. The included 10K search requests, 50K records, 5K recommendation requests, and 5K crawls are roughly a small slice of the cheapest paid plan’s allowance, so a buyer would reasonably value it at about $1/month rather than anywhere near the $10 Grow plan.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- 10,000 search requests per month included.
- 100,000 records included.
- 10,000 recommend requests per month included.
- 10,000 crawls per month included.
- 1 free Guide included.
- 30 days of analytics retention included.
- Keyword Search + Browse included.
- Query suggestions included.
- Rules: 10 per index included.
- Manual synonyms included.
- Data transformation included.
- Third-party integrations and connectors included.
- US, UK, and EU hosting locations included.
- 1 application included.
- Up to 50 indices per application included.
- 100GB index size limit.
- 100GB maximum application size.
- Average 10KB per record, maximum 100KB per record.
See Algolia pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Grow
- search requests/month included
- 10K
- records included
- 100K
- rules per index
- 10
- analytics retention
- 30 days
- Keyword Search + Browse
- Query suggestions
- Rules: 10/index
- Manual synonyms
- Data transformation
- 30 days analytics retention
- Third party integrations + connectors
- US, UK, EU hosting locations
Grow Plus
- search requests/month included
- 10K
- records included
- 100K
- rules per index
- 10,000
- analytics retention
- 90 days
- Keyword search with AI capabilities
- NeuralSearch
- AI Synonyms
- AI Ranking
- Advanced Personalization
- Query Categorization
- Collections
- 90 days analytics retention
Elevate
- search requests
- custom
- records
- custom
- Enterprise-scale AI Search
- Volume-based discounts
- Custom search requests and records
- NeuralSearch
- AI Collections
- Smart Groups
- Real-time personalization
- 99.99% availability
Pricing extracted from Algolia's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Algolia free forever?
Yes. Algolia has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
Does Algolia require a credit card?
No. You can start on Algolia's free tier without entering card details.
What happens when you exceed Algolia's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. Algolia's cheapest paid plan is Grow at $10 / month.
What is Algolia's free tier worth?
Algolia's free tier is worth about $1.00 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 46/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
