# Algolia — Hosted search and retrieval API with keyword, neural and agent layers, metered per 1K requests.

> Source: AgentsIndex — https://agentsindex.ai/algolia (structured, researched, re-verified)

Algolia is a hosted search and retrieval platform that indexes a company's records and serves keyword, semantic and recommendation results through an API. Agent Studio and three managed MCP servers put the same indices behind conversational and AI-assistant experiences.

**Best for:** Ecommerce and content teams putting site search and onsite AI answers on one index

**Look elsewhere if:**

- you want any plan without talking to sales
- you need to cancel any time on every plan
- you need single sign-on below the Elevate plan
- your data must stay out of model training without asking

| Fact | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Website | https://algolia.com |
| Category | AI enterprise search |
| API | Yes |
| Open source | Partly |
| Price | Free |
| Price source | https://www.algolia.com/pricing |
| Price checked | 28 October 2026 |
| MCP server | Partly |
| Self-host | No |
| Facts | 22 facts from 11 sources |
| Facts checked | 28 October 2026 |

Screenshot of Algolia: https://agentsindex.ai/img/1920/screenshots/algolia.webp, captured 29 October 2026

**What we checked**

- Pages last read: 28 October 2026
- Facts checked: 22 facts (From 11 sources)

## Retrieval over HTTPS, with the front end left to you

Algolia hosts an index of your records and answers queries against it over HTTPS, typically in milliseconds, through [API clients](https://www.algolia.com/developers/integrations) for JavaScript, React, Android, iOS, Ruby, Rails, Python, Django, PHP, Java, Scala, Go, C#, Kotlin and Swift. The front end is assembled from the InstantSearch libraries; the relevance is tuned in a dashboard with rules, synonyms, virtual replicas and merchandising controls.

Three layers sit above the keyword engine. NeuralSearch combines semantic and keyword matching, Recommend serves related and frequently-bought-together items from the same records, and [Agent Studio](https://www.algolia.com/products/ai/agent-studio) wraps the index in a conversational agent for product questions, guided selling and fit checks. Agent Studio lets each experience pick its own model, with support for Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini and OpenAI-compatible endpoints, and an optional per-user memory that stores preferences between sessions.

## Three managed MCP servers, two of them read-only

Algolia runs [three MCP servers](https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/model-context-protocol) rather than one. Public MCP exposes chosen indices and Recommend models to outside assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Vertex AI, Perplexity, Amazon Q, Microsoft Copilot and Agentforce. Productivity MCP is scoped to each signed-in employee's own Algolia permissions and adds analytics tools for questions like which searches return nothing. DevEx MCP generates API client snippets matching the client version in a project and touches no customer data.

The documentation is explicit that "Public MCP and Productivity MCP are read-only" and do not create or change indices, records or settings. Usage counts against the existing plan with no separate MCP fee. The [product specific terms](https://www.algolia.com/policies/product-specific-terms) place the liability for anything an agent does on the subscriber: where Algolia makes an MCP server available "it acts solely as a passive connector".

## Four meters run at once and the top plan has no price

There is no seat price. Every [plan](https://www.algolia.com/pricing) including the paid ones starts with an inclusion and then meters: 10,000 search requests a month, then $0.50 per additional 1,000 on Grow and $1.75 on Grow Plus; 100,000 records, then $0.40 per additional 1,000; 10,000 Recommend requests, then $0.60 per 1,000; 10,000 crawls, then $0.80 per 1,000. A buyer can therefore sit on a paid plan and pay nothing in a quiet month, which is why the entry figure here is a unit rate rather than a monthly fee.

Two details change the arithmetic. Record overage is charged on the highest record count reached during the month, minus the three largest days, and each pre-sorted replica of an index copies its records into the total. The gap between Grow and Grow Plus is AI: ranking, advanced personalization, query categorization, collections, 10,000 rules per index instead of 10, and 90 days of analytics instead of 30.

The fourth plan publishes no number. It carries NeuralSearch, AI Collections, Smart Groups, real-time personalization, 99.99% availability, SSO access and global hosting, and reaching it means an evaluation request and an annual contract. Volume discounts exist only with that contract.

## Your records can train Algolia's models unless you opt out

The [product specific terms](https://www.algolia.com/policies/product-specific-terms) say NeuralSearch "models continuously improve through a training process that learns from anonymized patterns across Algolia's network of subscribers", and a subscriber on a NeuralSearch plan grants a license to use their data for that training. Personal data is carved out, and there is a dashboard opt-out, but it is forward-looking: only data added after the opt-out is excluded.

The [Terms of Service](https://www.algolia.com/policies/terms) add a broader improvement right over non-personal subscriber data and over usage logs. Against that, the [trust center](https://trust.algolia.com/) lists SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27017, GDPR and CCPA, with SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, C5 Type 2 and ISO reports plus a penetration test attestation offered behind an access request. A data processing addendum is incorporated into the terms by reference. Hosting is pinned to the United States, United Kingdom or EU West on the self-serve plans.

## The uptime promise is tiered and so is the compensation

The published [SLA](https://www.algolia.com/policies/sla) is unusually concrete for a search vendor. Monthly guaranteed uptime runs from 99.95% on the Starter and Base Foundation support plans to 99.99% on Professional and Expert and 99.999% on a Premier Platform Availability option, with service credits capped at 15% to 50% of that month's subscription price. Credits are the sole remedy, they cannot be converted to cash, and eligibility depends on running a recent major version of the API client: the current major version, or the previous one for two years after the newer release.

Degradation caused by exceeding plan limits is explicitly not an outage. Support itself is an add-on rather than part of the plan, alongside optional professional services.

## Where it fits, and where it does not

The fit is a catalog or content set a team already owns, a developer to index it, and enough traffic that relevance affects revenue. Merchandisers get real controls once the index exists: pinning, promotions, collections, A/B tests and 90-day analytics on the upper plans.

It fits badly in three cases. A team with no engineering capacity will stall before the first query, because records are pushed through an API client or crawler and the interface is built from libraries. A buyer who needs a predictable monthly figure faces four simultaneous meters and no published calculator. A team that needs an assistant to write back to the index will find the MCP servers read-only and will be sent to the CLI, the dashboard or an API client for changes.

Two more limits are worth naming. The API logs endpoint keeps only seven days and the last 1,000 requests per server, which is thin if a formal change record is required. And single sign-on sits on the quoted plan, so a company with an identity-provider mandate is in a sales conversation from the start.

## Algolia price and terms

**Terms**

- Free plan: Yes — Free plan: 10,000 search requests a month, 50,000 records, 5,000 recommendation requests a month, 5,000 crawls a month, 1 application, 20 indices, 1 GB index size, 7 days analytics retention, no credit card required. Grow and Grow Plus also include 10,000 search requests, 10,000 Recommend requests, 100,000 records and 10,000 crawls before metering starts.
- Card to start: Not required
- Sign up without sales: Some plans

**What needs a higher plan**

- Elevate: Single sign-on

## For AI agents

- MCP server: Partly
- API: Yes

Pricing page as we captured it: https://agentsindex.ai/img/1920/screenshots/algolia/pricing.webp, captured 29 October 2026

Read on https://www.algolia.com/pricing, 28 October 2026.

## What we checked on Algolia

### What it costs to start

**What the price counts** · Partly — Paid use is metered: search requests and records are counted per 1,000 above a monthly inclusion, with recommendations and crawls metered separately, while the top plan is quoted by sales only.

> 10K search requests /month included then $0.50 per additional 1K search requests
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Plan cards, Grow plan, pay-as-you-go column, checked 28 October 2026

**Free tier** · Yes — A standing Free plan carries 10,000 search requests, 50,000 records, 5,000 recommendation requests and 5,000 crawls a month at no cost.

> INCLUDES: - 10K search requests/month - 50K records included - 5K recommendation requests/month - 5K crawls/month
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Plan cards, Free plan includes list, checked 28 October 2026

**Self-serve signup** · Partly — Free, Grow and Grow Plus start from a dashboard sign-up, but the enterprise-tier plan is sold through an evaluation request and an annual contract rather than checkout.

> Grow and Grow Plus plans are billed monthly with no contract required. Elevate plan requires an annual contract, contact us to learn more.
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Pricing FAQs, "Does Algolia require an annual contract?", checked 28 October 2026

**Card to start** · No — The Free plan states no card is taken at sign-up, so a buyer can index data and run searches before any billing detail is entered.

> No credit card required.
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Plan cards, Free plan description, checked 28 October 2026

**Contract** · Partly — The two self-serve paid plans bill monthly with no commitment, while the quoted top plan is sold only on an annual contract with volume discounts attached to it.

> Grow and Grow Plus plans are billed monthly with no contract required. Elevate plan requires an annual contract, contact us to learn more.
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Pricing FAQs, "Does Algolia require an annual contract?", checked 28 October 2026

**Cancel any time** · Partly — Monthly plans carry no contract to exit, but the Terms of Service make minimum commitments non-cancelable, bar refunds, and make early termination liable for the rest of the term.

> Minimum commitments in Service Orders are (a) based on Services purchased and not actual usage; (b) non-cancelable; and (c) cannot be decreased during the specified term. Fees paid are not refundable.
> — https://www.algolia.com/policies/terms · Section 7.1 Fees, checked 28 October 2026

### What it works with

**Works with** · Yes — The plan comparison names four commerce platforms as supported integrations, alongside analytics capture through Segment and Google Tag Manager and official API clients for most server languages.

> Salesforce CC B2C, Shopify, Adobe Commerce, commercetools. See all integrations.
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Detailed feature comparison, Integrations & Data section, Ecommerce Platform Integrations row, checked 28 October 2026

**Public API** · Yes — The product is an API first: indexing, search, analytics and monitoring are all REST endpoints with published OpenAPI specifications and clients in eleven languages.

> You need a valid API key to send or update your data, search your index, or do anything else with Algolia's API.
> — https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/security/api-keys · API keys guide, opening paragraph, checked 28 October 2026

**MCP server** · Partly — Three Algolia-managed MCP servers exist and count against the normal plan, but the two that touch customer data are read-only, so an assistant can search and report yet not write records or settings.

> Public MCP and Productivity MCP are **read-only**. They search, recommend, and (for Productivity MCP) report analytics. They don't create or change indices, records, or settings.
> — https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/model-context-protocol · MCP Server overview, note block under the three offerings, checked 28 October 2026

### What it does on its own

**Acts on its own** · Partly — Agent Studio agents answer shoppers, compare products and recommend next steps without a human in the loop, but the agents retrieve and reply rather than complete transactions, and index changes stay with the dashboard, CLI or API.

> Agent Studio brings intelligent, automated guidance into onsite discovery so buyers can move forward with less friction.
> — https://www.algolia.com/products/ai/agent-studio · Hero section, product description under the heading, checked 28 October 2026

**Limits on what it may do** · Yes — Agent scope, approved sources and response boundaries are configurable before launch, and separately every API key carries an access control list plus index, rate and expiry restrictions.

> Define what the experience should and should not respond to, so the agent stays aligned to your catalog, policies, use case, and brand.
> — https://www.algolia.com/products/ai/agent-studio · "Built for teams that need control" section, "Keep guidance focused" panel, checked 28 October 2026

**No code needed** · Partly — Merchandising, rules and collections are configurable by business users in the dashboard, and the crawler is low-code, but putting search in front of users still needs an engineer to index data and build the interface.

> Adjust how products appear across category and collection pages. Pin items, promote campaigns, or adapt ranking strategies without engineering support.
> — https://www.algolia.com/ · "Powering AI retrieval across use cases" list, Merchandising item, checked 28 October 2026

### What happens to your data

**No training on your data** · Partly — Customer records feed NeuralSearch model training by default on plans that include it, with a dashboard opt-out that applies only to data added after the opt-out; personal data is excluded from that training license.

> Subscriber can opt-out of training Algolia's NeuralSearch models at any time via the Algolia user interface dashboard. New Subscriber Data added after the date of opt-out will not be used to train Algolia's NeuralSearch models.
> — https://www.algolia.com/policies/product-specific-terms · NeuralSearch section, checked 28 October 2026

**Retention you control** · Partly — Retention windows are set by plan rather than by the buyer: analytics are kept 7, 30 or 90 days depending on tier and API logs for seven days, while records themselves can be deleted at any time through the API.

> Analytics Retention Length 7 days 30 days 90 days 90 days
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Detailed feature comparison, Analytics section, Analytics Retention Length row, checked 28 October 2026

**Data stays in your region** · Yes — Hosting location is a plan feature: the self-serve plans offer United States, United Kingdom and EU West, and the quoted top plan opens global locations.

> Hosting Locations US, UK, EU West US, UK, EU West US, UK, EU West Global
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Detailed feature comparison, Infrastructure & Plan Limits section, Hosting Locations row, checked 28 October 2026

**Self-hosted** · No — The subscription is to a hosted service on Algolia's own infrastructure; the terms grant a limited subscription to hosted search, and no on-premise or self-managed deployment is offered.

> The complete subscription agreement including these Terms (the "Agreement") is made for the purpose of granting Subscriber a limited subscription to use Algolia's hosted search, support, professional or other services (the "Services").
> — https://www.algolia.com/policies/terms · Section 1 Agreement, checked 28 October 2026

**Open source** · Partly — The API clients and UI libraries are released as open source under their own licenses, while the search engine and dashboard remain proprietary and reserved to Algolia.

> From time to time, Algolia may make available to Subscriber open source software ("Open Source Software") which may include certain language specific codes that enable easy communication with Algolia Software ("API Clients")
> — https://www.algolia.com/policies/terms · Section 9.2 Algolia Software and API Clients, checked 28 October 2026

**Take your data out** · Yes — Records can be read back in bulk with the browse endpoint or the command line tool, and the documented example writes an entire index to a newline-delimited JSON file.

> Browse records in the "MOVIES" and export the results to a new line delimited JSON (ndjson) file:
> — https://www.algolia.com/doc/tools/cli/commands/objects/browse · Examples section, final example, checked 28 October 2026

### Whether a company can buy it

**Security audits** · Yes — The trust center lists SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27017, GDPR and CCPA, with SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, ISO certificates and a penetration test attestation available as documents on request.

> Compliance SOC 2 ISO 27001:2022 ISO 27017 GDPR CCPA
> — https://trust.algolia.com/ · Compliance panel on the trust center overview, checked 28 October 2026

**Single sign-on** · Partly — Single sign-on is listed as a feature of the quoted top plan rather than of the self-serve tiers, bundled there with the stronger uptime commitment.

> Access to SSO and enhanced SLA
> — https://www.algolia.com/pricing · Plan cards, annual plan feature list, checked 28 October 2026

**Audit log** · Partly — A logs endpoint returns recent API operations per index, but the window is seven days and only the last 1,000 requests per server are kept, which is operational logging rather than a durable record of who changed what.

> Logs are held for the last seven days. Up to 1,000 API requests per server are logged.
> — https://www.algolia.com/doc/rest-api/search/get-logs · Retrieve log entries, bullet list under the summary, checked 28 October 2026

**Uptime promise** · Yes — A published SLA sets monthly uptime per plan from 99.95% to 99.999% and pays service credits capped between 15% and 50% of the monthly subscription price.

> Starter Foundation | 99.95% | 100 | 15%
> — https://www.algolia.com/policies/sla · Plan uptime table, first row, checked 28 October 2026

## Algolia alternatives

- [Glean](https://agentsindex.ai/glean) · Price on request: Permission-mirroring search and agents over 275+ enterprise connectors, sold per seat with pooled usage credits.
- [Bloomfire](https://agentsindex.ai/bloomfire) · Price on request: Keeps a persistent semantic memory of connected systems, so AI answers from governed company knowledge.
- [Coveo](https://agentsindex.ai/coveo) · Price on request: Unifies search, recommendations and generative answers across many enterprise systems behind one permission-aware index.
- [Moveworks](https://agentsindex.ai/moveworks) · Price on request: Enterprise AI assistant that answers from connected systems and runs IT, HR and finance tasks in chat.

## Questions about Algolia

### How much does Algolia cost?

Algolia is free to use. From algolia.com/pricing, checked 28 October 2026.

### Does Algolia have an API or an MCP server?

It has an API. It has a limited MCP server.

### Is Algolia open source, and can you host it yourself?

Part of it is open source. You cannot host it yourself.

### What have we checked on Algolia?

22 facts, under these headings: What it costs to start, what it works with, what it does on its own, what happens to your data, whether a company can buy it.

### How do we check Algolia?

We hold 22 facts on Algolia, quoted from 11 pages. Facts and price last checked 28 October 2026.

How we check every listing: https://agentsindex.ai/methodology/

## Sources and changes

**Sources** (11)

- https://www.algolia.com/pricing, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/policies/terms, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/products/ai/agent-studio, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/, read 28 October 2026
- https://trust.algolia.com/, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/model-context-protocol, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/security/api-keys, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/rest-api/search/get-logs, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/tools/cli/commands/objects/browse, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/policies/product-specific-terms, read 28 October 2026
- https://www.algolia.com/policies/sla, read 28 October 2026

**Updates** (1)

- 28 October 2026: Free tier, Price, What it does

## Is this yours?

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity opened AgentsIndex pages 1,131 times from 17 October to 29 October. Claim Algolia to edit it from your dashboard: https://agentsindex.ai/claim/algolia