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Free Algolia Alternatives

Looking for something other than Algolia (Grow, free usage)? These 4 realtime & search services also have a free tier. Limits come from each vendor's own pricing page; click a date to check the source. Last updated 12 Nov 2026.

Algolia Free Tier (For Reference)

Service	Free limits	Catch	Checked
Algolia (Grow, free usage) Free tier	Search requests10K / month included Records100K included Rules10 per index Analytics retention30 days	Pay-as-you-go plan: beyond the included usage it bills $0.50 per 1K search requests and $0.40 per 1K records. Algolia also lists a separate Free plan (10K search requests/month, 50K records, 5K recommendation requests, 5K crawls).	5 Nov 2026

4 Free Alternatives

Service	Free limits	Catch	Checked
Pusher Channels (Sandbox) Free tier	Messages200k / day Concurrent connections100	Sandbox is the only free plan; paid plans start at Startup $49/month.	12 Nov 2026
Ably (Free) Free tier	Monthly active usersUp to 500 MAUs Messages6M / month Message rate500 / second Concurrent connections500 Concurrent channels500	Ably now prices by monthly active users: Free covers up to 500 MAUs with best-effort community and email support; Pro starts at $29/month for 1K MAUs. Message history is kept 24 hours by default (30 days max) on Free.	9 Nov 2026
Cloudflare Durable Objects Free tier	Requests100,000 / day Duration13,000 GB-s / day SQLite rows read5M / day SQLite rows written100,000 / day SQL stored data5 GB total	Workers Free can only use SQLite-backed Durable Objects; requests include WebSocket messages and alarms. Operations fail once a daily limit is hit (reset 00:00 UTC).	11 Nov 2026
LiveKit Cloud (Build) Free tier	Agent session minutes1,000 / month Concurrent agent sessions5 WebRTC participant minutes5,000 / month Concurrent participants100 Inference credits$2.50 / month US local phone number1 free US local inbound minutes50 / month Downstream data transfer50 GB / month Transcode minutes60 / month	Build plan allowances are a hard cap: exceeding them fails new requests rather than billing. Free projects share allowances across a user's free projects; unused credits do not roll over.	6 Nov 2026

FAQ

What are the best free alternatives to Algolia?

4 other realtime & search services with a permanent free tier are tracked here: Pusher Channels, Ably, Cloudflare Durable Objects, LiveKit Cloud. Each limit is copied from the vendor's pricing page and dated.

Does Algolia itself have a free tier?

Yes: Search requests 10K / month included; Records 100K included; Rules 10 per index; Analytics retention 30 days. Last checked 5 Nov 2026.

How do I pick a free Algolia alternative?

Start with the limit your app will hit first (for example requests, storage, emails or users), then read each service's catch. The table on this page shows both for every alternative.

See all realtime & search free tiers or the head-to-head comparisons.