Is Sellarix search as good as Algolia?

At pure retrieval, no, and we would rather say that than have you find out. What we do differently is ground the query against your real attribute vocabulary rather than matching on embeddings alone, and feed operational signals like stock and demand into ranking.

How much does Algolia actually cost?

Their published tiers are usage-based on search requests and records. NeuralSearch, the AI product, is on the Elevate plan, which is quote-only with an annual contract. Get the quote before you compare.

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Sellarix vs Algolia

Algolia is very good at search. Better than us at pure retrieval quality and latency, and it would be silly to claim otherwise when their engineering is a decade ahead. What has changed is that search alone is no longer the whole job, and the pricing has moved somewhere a lot of merchants cannot follow.

01 / Credit

What Algolia does better

Every vendor comparison on the internet claims the vendor wins on everything, which is why nobody believes any of them. Here is where Algolia is genuinely stronger.

Relevance and latency
A decade of engineering on retrieval quality and sub-100ms response. For pure search, they are excellent, and any comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading.
Developer experience
Mature APIs, InstantSearch UI libraries, extensive documentation and a large ecosystem. If you have engineers who want to build a custom search experience, it is a pleasure to work with.
Scale
Proven at volumes far beyond what a mid-market merchant will ever reach.

02 / Difference

Where we differ

The AI product is not the entry tier
NeuralSearch, the hybrid vector and keyword product, sits on the Elevate plan, which is quote-only and requires an annual contract. The published pay-as-you-go tiers give you keyword search with rules and synonyms. Worth knowing before you compare it to anything on price.
Source: Algolia pricing
Cost predictability is the recurring complaint
The consistent theme in Algolia reviews is not quality, it is bill shock. Usage-based pricing on search requests and records is hard to forecast when traffic spikes or a catalogue grows. Some teams report paying for search in staging environments. We publish prices and enforce a hard spend cap with alerting.
Search that knows your stock
Algolia can bury out-of-stock items. It cannot know a product is heading for dead stock in eight weeks, because forecasting is not something a search vendor holds. We do, because both live on one spine. That is the capability no search vendor can ship at any price.

03 / Side by side

Feature comparison

Algolia compared with Sellarix, capability by capability
Capability	Algolia	Sellarix
Pure relevance quality	Best in class(they win)	Good, not best
Latency	Sub-100ms(they win)	Competitive
Developer ecosystem	Extensive(they win)	Smaller
AI search on the entry tier	Elevate only, quote-only	Included from £99/mo
Published pricing	PAYG tiers only; AI is quote-only	All tiers published
Spend cap	Not offered	Hard cap with alerting
Uses demand forecast in ranking	No	Yes
Beyond search	Search and recommendations	Six suites on one spine

04 / Fit

Which one you should actually pick

Choose Algolia if

Search relevance is the single most important thing you are buying, you have engineers to build with it, and the budget is not the constraint.

Choose Sellarix if

You want good search plus the rest of the stack, on a published price, with the ranking informed by what is actually happening in your inventory.

05 / Questions

Common questions

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Sellarix vs Algolia

What Algolia does better

Relevance and latency

Developer experience

Scale