Rails Search

Three tiers. Use the cheapest one that solves the problem. Most Rails apps never need Elasticsearch — Postgres + pg_search gets you to millions of rows with good UX. AI agents reach for ES by default; this skill pushes back.

The opinion

Default: pg_search with PostgreSQL tsvector + pg_trgm. Step up to Meilisearch when you need typo tolerance, autocomplete, and faceted UX. Reach for Elasticsearch / OpenSearch only when you genuinely need clustered, sharded, analytics-grade search at billion-row scale. Use searchkick as a Rails-idiomatic wrapper around either Elasticsearch or OpenSearch. Always index in the background, never inline.

Why this order:

• pg_search uses your existing database. No new infra. No sync drift.
• Meilisearch is a single-binary Rust server. Smaller than ES, sub-50ms queries, typo tolerance built-in.
• ES/OpenSearch is the right tool at scale but operationally expensive — cluster management, JVM tuning, mapping migrations.

Tier 1: pg_search (default)

Setup