Top all-time · #3367
posts about tech, search database, and open-source on Manticore Search
Company blog · manticoresearch.com/blogprogrammingdata
posts about tech, search database, and open-source on Manticore Search is the company blog at manticoresearch.com, writing about programming and data. Since 2017, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 94 times, most often “Manticore Compared to Elasticsearch”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The Manticore Search team's blog covers their open-source search engine, a fork of Sphinx and an Elasticsearch alternative. It also covers semantic and vector search, comparisons, and release notes. HN mostly links the product pages.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Manticore Search is an easy-to-use open source fast database for search. Elasticsearch alternative, vector search, SQL interface, full-text search capabilities
Most-linked posts?
- /7 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2017-10-23
- Manticore Compared to Elasticsearch3 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2022-07-28
- What if GitHub had vector search?2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-08-26
- Manticore Search 27.1.5: Auth, sharding, conversational and faster vector search2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-06-22
- Vector search in old and modern databases2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-13
- Manticore 6.0.0 – a faster alternative to Elasticsearch in C++2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-09
- TF-IDF in a Nutshell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-09
What Hacker News says?
> what are the good search server options for a small shop dealing wth geo search? Manticore Search is an actively developed GPLv2 fork of Sphinxsearch since 2017 - https://manticoresearch.com/
Comment linking /
on “AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana”Submitted TF-IDF in a Nutshell as a story · 84 points
HN discussionConfused? Alternatives to Elasticsearch are - https://www.meilisearch.com/ - https://typesense.org/ - https://manticoresearch.com/ and maybe - https://github.com/Sygil-Dev/whoosh-reloaded
Comment linking /
on “Elasticsearch is open source, again”Submitted Better Vector Search for Long Documents: Chunking Inside Manticore Search as a story · 80 points
HN discussionOh! Damn it I forgot about manticore -- I had seen it before but forgot to include it. Eventually all of these projects will be highlighted on Awesome F/OSS ( https://awsmfoss.com ), but for now I'm just going to dump my bookmarks here for other people, since I'm leaving awesome projects out: Search Engines AWS OpenSearch https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSear…
Comment linking /
on “Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend”Submitted Manticore 6.0.0 – a faster alternative to Elasticsearch in C++ as a story · 34 points
HN discussionand almost all of them won't offer ES-compatible API. Out of my head i can think about manticore ( https://manticoresearch.com/ ) that offers at least subset of elasticsearch API
Comment linking /
on “Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend”Submitted What if GitHub had vector search? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> you might look at sphinx search engine Manticore Search [1] forked from the latest open source version and has been continually improved for more than 5 years. [1] https://manticoresearch.com/ > although it doesn't has as much features as ES has Manticore unlike Sphinx is much closer to Elasticsearch in terms of features set.
Comment linking /
on “Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend”Submitted Manticore Compared to Elasticsearch as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAnd it's open source continuation - Manticore Search [1] [1] https://manticoresearch.com/
Comment linking /
on “Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend”Submitted Vector search in old and modern databases as a story · 4 points
HN discussionManticore Search. Here's a blog post with detailed comparison [1] [1] https://manticoresearch.com/blog/manticore-alternative-to-el...
Comment linking /blog/manticore-alternative-to-elasticsearch/
on “Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend”Submitted Full-Text Search Still Works. It Just Doesn't Get You to an Answer as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLooks pretty good. The single filter approach is restrictive though. We're currently leaning towards Manticore Search[1], which is a fork of Sphinx Search[2]. [1] https://manticoresearch.com [2] http://sphinxsearch.com
Comment linking /
on “MeiliSearch: Zero-config alternative to Elasticsearch, made in Rust”Submitted Manticore Search 10.1.0 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch gets a lot of traction recently. There are also Sphinx and its fork https://manticoresearch.com/ - very lightweight and fast.
Comment linking /
on “ClickHouse as an alternative to Elasticsearch for log storage and analysis”Submitted Vector Search: Deep Dive as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSphinx and Manticore Search [1] have support of the Russian language out of the box for like 15+ years :) [1] https://manticoresearch.com/
Comment linking /
on “Postgres Full Text Search vs. the Rest”Submitted Vector Search in Manticore Search: A Deep Dive as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOr Manticore Search (startup time 2 seconds) :) Manticore vs Elasticsearch startup time benchmark - https://manticoresearch.com/blog/manticore-alternative-to-el...
Comment linking /blog/manticore-alternative-to-elasticsearch/
on “Dotfiles being hidden is a UNIXv2 mistake (2012)”Submitted Vector Search on GitHub as a story · 3 points
HN discussionManticore is seldom mentioned around here but it seems to be a really good alternative [1]. The fact that is the search engine Craigslist uses gives them a lot of credibility. This may be a bit silly, but I wonder if the design of their blog and website makes them look a bit "old fashioned" or something. -- 1: https://manticoresearch.com/blog/manticore-alternative-to-el...
Comment linking /blog/manticore-alternative-to-elasticsearch/
on “Full text search over Postgres: Elasticsearch vs. alternatives”Submitted Manticore 3.4.0 release: online schema change, new PHP client and Docker image as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://manticoresearch.com/ is the lively, open source, fork of Sphinxsearch. that's where some of the earlier developers from the project moved to. it's used as a text-search backend on craigslist.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Are Lucene/Solr/ES Still Used for Search?”Submitted How we’ve remade sys threads in Manticore Search as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's worth mentioning that the original Sphinxsearch project has been stagnant for the past year. There's a new lively fork - https://manticoresearch.com/ Beyond being a user of both I don't have affiliations with either of them.
Comment linking /
on “Riot – Full-text search engine in Go”Submitted Manticore Search under systemd: beyond fork, PID files, and guesswork as a story · 2 points
HN discussionManticore Search [1] is a good alternative to Elasticsearch if you prefer SQL [1]: https://manticoresearch.com/blog/manticore-alternative-to-el...
Comment linking /blog/manticore-alternative-to-elasticsearch/
on “ZincSearch – lightweight alternative to Elasticsearch written in Go”Submitted Manticore Search 27.1.5: Auth, sharding, conversational and faster vector search as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
