Simply put, a record is an item or object that contains data that someone would search (or get recommendations) for. The total number of records is equal to the sum of records that you have in all of your indices. Note that each pre-sort of your records creates a copy of the relevant pre-sorted records and as a result, increases your total record count.

Each Search plan allows you to store a certain number of records at any given time. You can update, delete, or add as many records as you want as long as the total number of the indexed records does not exceed the inclusion of the plan. If you go over the inclusion, you’ll be charged an over-quota based on the maximum number of records you’ve reached. Depending on your plan, there may be an opportunity to pre-purchase additional records at the beginning of your contract period at a discounted price.

Note: To offer some flexibility, Algolia ignores the 3 days with the most records in each month before calculating the total number of records.

A Recommend request is triggered when a Recommend API call is performed to retrieve a list of recommendations for a specific item. Multiple Recommend requests can be batched within a single Recommend API call to improve network latency.

A Search unit is used to represent a certain number of search requests (query only, free indexing ops) and records.

A Search unit allows us to provide one metric per price level, instead of two separate ones in an effort to simplify our pricing for the prospect or customer.

When using Pay-as-you go pricing (no contract or minimum commitment), each unit contains 1,000 search requests per month, and a maximum of 1,000 records. This way, one Search unit bought each month for twelve months will give 12,000 searches in one year, with a maximum of 1,000 records at any point in the year.

When committing annually, you will get 12 Search units over a 12-month period including 12,000 search requests for twelve months and a maximum of 1,000 records at any point in the year.

The minimum commitment for a year is 1,200 Search units.

If your use case includes higher record volumes than what is provided by this model, please contact sales.

If fewer Search units are used than included in what I purchased, they do not roll over to the following service period.

Browse and Navigation experiences are relying on the same Search requests as search results pages, but instead powered by a click (of a page or filter) rather than a query string.

You do. You retain ownership of all the data you send to your user account.

If you exceed your committed usage overages will be charged. For Standard Search plans, the cost is $1 / extra unit. For Premium Search plans, the cost is $1.50 / extra unit. For Recommend, the cost is $0.60 / extra 1,000 Recommend requests.

Yes! We know you’ll love Algolia, so please feel free to try it before you decide that it’s right for your company - we offer a 14 day free trial (with a maximum of 500 Search units and 500,000 Recommend requests included) with many of our Premium Search features, including our Search API, Recommend API and community support & documentation. Signup here.

Yes, we are providing 90-day retention for data for all new customers and can extend to 365-day as an add-on.

Algolia’s pricing offers new volume based discounts and committed use discounts.

There are three main levers to consider - how many Search units will be consumed, the product edition in use (Standard versus Premium) and whether or not you are using Algolia in a Pay as you go model, or annual commitment model.

Here is one example to illustrate:

Pay as you go, Standard, for 100 Search units per month.

The cost of this option for Standard Search plan is:

• $0 for first 10 Search units
• $1.00 for the next 90 Search units = $90
• TOTAL: $90 per month or $90 x 12 months = $1,080 / year
  Your average cost per Search unit is $0.90

Pay as you go, Standard for 600 Search units per month

The cost of this option for Standard Search plan is:

• $0 for first 10 Search units
• $1.00 for the next 90 Search units = $90
• $0.90 for the next 400 Search units = $360
• $0.80 for the next 100 Search units = $80
• TOTAL: ($90 + $360 + $100) = $530 per month or $530 x 12 = $6,360 / year
  Your average cost per Search unit is $0.88

When committing to the equivalent of 100 Search units per month or more, you are automatically unlocking a minimum of 20% discount compared to PAYG.

Annual commitments allow you to unlock bigger discounts on your Algolia usage. For a minimum of 100 Search units per month / 1,200 Search units per year (or 100,000 Recommend requests per month / 1,200,000 Recommend requests per year), you will receive a flat 20% discount, up to 500 Search units per month / 6,000 Search units per year (or 500,000 Recommend requests per month / 6,000,000 Recommend requests per year). For additional Search units above and beyond 500 Search units per month, you unlock greater volume based discounts, making your cost per Search unit drop even further. A similar mechanism applies for Recommend above 50,000,000 Recommend requests. Please contact sales for more information.

Additionally, Annual commitments give you predictability and flexibility in your overall spend. Lock in annual volume discounts while having the flexibility to use more in peak months, and less in slower months.

Annual commitments are also required for purchasing Algolia’s Enterprise Foundation, as well as add-ons such as crawler, DSN or dedicated infrastructure to power more sophisticated deployments.