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Meilisearch Cloud bills each project independently. Resource-based projects are billed hourly (prorated), while usage-based projects follow a monthly cycle.

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Resource-based pricing

Resource-based projects are billed for the resources you provision, regardless of how many searches you run or documents you index. Your bill combines three components: Pricing may vary slightly by region. The Cloud UI shows the exact rates for your selected region.

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High Performance Disk (Enterprise)

Enterprise accounts can enable High Performance Disk on L tiers and above. It provides roughly 5x the IOPS and disk bandwidth of standard disk, which improves indexing throughput and search speed for disk-bound workloads. Contact sales@meilisearch.com to enable it.

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Usage-based pricing

Usage-based projects are billed on what your project actually consumes. The self-serve usage-based plan is Build: For higher volumes or dedicated resources, the Custom plan offers tailored quotas, dedicated resources, and Meilisearch team support. Contact sales@meilisearch.com for a quote. Resources scale automatically. You do not choose a tier. The Cloud UI shows your accrued costs based on recent usage.

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How usage-based billing is charged

  • Plan cost: the base plan fee is charged upfront at the start of each billing cycle.
  • Extra usage: searches and documents beyond the included quota are charged at the end of the billing cycle, once the total is known.
  • Cancellation: if you cancel your plan before the end of the month, the unused portion of the base plan fee is prorated and returned as a credit.
  • Outstanding usage: if you remove your payment method while extra usage charges are still outstanding, Meilisearch will follow up to collect the owed amount.

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Shared billing rules

Regardless of billing model:
  • Billed at the team level. Charges accrue per project (based on resources and usage), and all of a team’s projects roll up into a single bill for the team or organization.
  • Prorated charges (resource-based). For resource-based projects, creating or deleting a project mid-cycle adjusts the charge proportionally to the time used.
  • No per-seat fees. Adding team members does not affect billing.

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Regions and pricing

Pricing may vary slightly by region. The Cloud UI shows the exact price for your selected region. See Cloud regions for the full list of available regions.

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Choosing a resource tier

For resource-based projects, the most important factor is RAM: Meilisearch keeps indexes in memory for fast search, so your instance needs enough RAM to hold your index comfortably.

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Step 1: Estimate your index size

Your index size depends on how many documents you have and how large each document is. Use these typical document sizes as a starting point: Formula:
The ×5 factor accounts for the inverted index, facet data, prefix structures, and other internal data Meilisearch builds from your documents. Examples:

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Step 2: Choose a tier with enough RAM

Choose the smallest tier where RAM exceeds your estimated index size. Leave headroom for query cache and peak usage. Tiers of 2XL and above are not self-serve in the Cloud UI: contact sales@meilisearch.com to provision them. For larger workloads, sales can also discuss Enterprise options including sharding and replication.

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Step 3: Consider vCPU for high query volume

RAM is almost always the bottleneck. However, if your workload involves sustained high QPS (hundreds of searches per second), choose a tier with more vCPUs. Tiers L and below share CPU resources, while XL and above provide dedicated cores.

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Interactive estimator

Use the pricing page calculator to get a recommendation based on your document count, document type, and expected search volume.

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Estimating your costs

Resource-based projects: the Cloud UI shows the hourly rate and an estimated monthly cost for each tier. You can also multiply the hourly rate by 730 for a full-month estimate. Usage-based projects: monitor the accrued cost shown in the Cloud UI over the first few days and extrapolate. Costs scale with search volume and document count, so factor in expected traffic growth.