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Elastic Cloud vs Weaviate

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Elastic Cloud and Weaviate built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 29 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Elastic Cloud if…

Teams that need full-text search and observability on the same underlying engine, or that want the option to self-host later — Elastic's dual identity as a search platform and an observability platform is the actual differentiator against single-purpose competitors.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Weaviate if…

Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Elastic Cloud: The need is narrowly error tracking or APM — a purpose-built tool is usually simpler to operate than standing up an Elasticsearch cluster for one workload, and Elastic Cloud's per-resource pricing doesn't publish a flat entry price the way single-purpose competitors do.
  • Weaviate: Predictable flat pricing matters more than granular control — per-dimension consumption billing means cost scales with embedding choices in a way a flat per-month plan doesn't.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Elastic Cloud alternatives · Weaviate alternatives

18 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Elastic Cloud documentationVisit Weaviate documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionElastic CloudWeaviate
Pricing
Free tier
No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.
Yes
Kind of free offerFree trial — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.Always free
Credit card to startNoNo
Entry paid plan
Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.
Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
Pricing modelThree deployment options priced differently: Hosted is resource-based, Serverless is usage-based — both pay-as-you-go monthly or prepaid — and Self-managed is licensed by node count and RAM.Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
Infrastructure
RegionsHosted: 60 regions across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (also Alibaba Cloud and FedRAMP). Serverless: generally available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
Uptime SLA
99.95% monthly, for the Platinum and Enterprise subscription tiers, on both Hosted and Serverless. Not applicable to self-managed, where the customer operates the infrastructure.
Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.
Vector
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)Supported — combines vector similarity scores with BM25F text-relevance scores in a single hybrid query.Supported across all plans.
Metadata filteringSupported — vector search results can be filtered by metadata while preserving approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search speed.Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Support
Support on entry paid planFour support tiers, keyed to the Elastic Cloud subscription tier rather than bought separately. Platinum and Enterprise share an identical support SLA.Email support on every tier including Free. Phone and Slack support start at Premium; a technical account team is an add-on there.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type 2 audit by Coalfire covers Elasticsearch Service and support subscriptions; report available on request via the Trust Center.SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
ISO 27001Information Security Program certified on ISO 27001, including ISO 27017 and ISO 27018.ISMS certified against ISO 27001, stated in the technical and organisational measures of the Data Processing Agreement.
HIPAAHIPAA business associate agreements available on all Elastic Cloud subscription tiers on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
GDPR / data residencyOperates in compliance with GDPR principles; customers can request a Data Processing Addendum through a support case.DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Encryption at restCluster data is encrypted at rest by default; TLS between Elasticsearch nodes and from the internet.AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Customer-managed keysSupported on Elastic Cloud Hosted via your cloud provider KMS, but only at the Enterprise subscription level; the key cannot yet be changed or removed once set.Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
Role-based access controlPredefined cloud resource roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer, billing admin) for Hosted and Serverless; custom roles can be created on Serverless projects.RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
Private networking / VPCAWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link for Hosted and Serverless; GCP Private Service Connect for Hosted only. IP filtering can be combined with private connections.PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
Dedicated infrastructure
Elasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers under least privilege; containers have no means of communicating with containers from another cluster. Scope: container-level isolation between customer clusters; no dedicated-hardware option is offered on this page.
Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Free tier

Elastic Cloud
No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.
Weaviate
Yes
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Elastic Cloud Serverless Zero operational load so that you can build faster Start free trial Elastic Cloud Hosted Deploy and scale on any cloud in minutes with ultimate control Start free trial”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “always free - 1 cluster per user, upgrade to paid anytime.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Kind of free offer

Elastic Cloud
Free trial — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.
Weaviate
Always free
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Elastic Cloud Serverless Zero operational load so that you can build faster Start free trial Elastic Cloud Hosted Deploy and scale on any cloud in minutes with ultimate control Start free trial”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “free forever $0 /mo no credit card required a fully managed ai database to explore weaviate features.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan

Elastic Cloud
Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.
Weaviate
Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Elastic Cloud
Three deployment options priced differently: Hosted is resource-based, Serverless is usage-based — both pay-as-you-go monthly or prepaid — and Self-managed is licensed by node count and RAM.
Weaviate
Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Pricing Resource based pricing Pay as you go (monthly) or prepaid Usage based pricing Pay as you go (monthly) or prepaid License-based pricing Licensing based on number of nodes and used RAM”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Why is pricing based on the total number of vector dimensions? [...] You are also billed for persistent and backup storage of objects and their embeddings. [...] Vector dimensions Free from $0.00465 / 1M”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Elastic Cloud
Hosted: 60 regions across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (also Alibaba Cloud and FedRAMP). Serverless: generally available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
Weaviate
Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, FedRamp — 60 regions across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Serverless currently generally available in AWS, GCP, and Azure.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “Cloud availability Cloud service provider AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS, Azure Regions Limited (2) Limited (7) Limited (7) All (~40)”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Uptime SLA

Elastic Cloud
99.95% monthly, for the Platinum and Enterprise subscription tiers, on both Hosted and Serverless. Not applicable to self-managed, where the customer operates the infrastructure.
Weaviate
Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.
Sources (2) →

Metadata filtering

Elastic Cloud
Supported — vector search results can be filtered by metadata while preserving approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search speed.
Weaviate
Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic: What is vector search? ↗

    “Filter vector search results using metadata. Maintain recall without sacrificing speed by applying a filter in line with approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official site · Report a correction

  • Filtering | Weaviate Documentation ↗

    “Weaviate provides powerful filtered vector search capabilities, allowing you to combine vector searches with structured, scalar filters. [...] Filtered vector search in Weaviate is based on the concept of pre-filtering.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Support on entry paid plan

Elastic Cloud
Four support tiers, keyed to the Elastic Cloud subscription tier rather than bought separately. Platinum and Enterprise share an identical support SLA.
Weaviate
Email support on every tier including Free. Phone and Slack support start at Premium; a technical account team is an add-on there.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “four support tiers, depending on the elastic cloud subscription tier two subscription tiers (platinum and enterprise) with identical support sla”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “Support / onboarding Email support ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Phone support × × ✓ ✓ Slack support × × ✓ ✓ Technical account team × × add-on add-on”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

SOC 2

Elastic Cloud
SOC 2 Type 2 audit by Coalfire covers Elasticsearch Service and support subscriptions; report available on request via the Trust Center.
Weaviate
SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Security | Elastic ↗

    “have been audited by Coalfire under the SOC 2 Type 2 framework. Customers can request a SOC 2 report through the Elastic Trust Center”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Vector Database Pricing | Weaviate ↗

    “SOC2 SOC 2 Type II independently audited via Drata. See our Trust Portal. [...] Is Weaviate Cloud SOC 2 / HIPAA compliant? + Yes. Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited, and Enterprise Cloud on AWS is HIPAA compliant. See the Trust Portal for details.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

ISO 27001

Elastic Cloud
Information Security Program certified on ISO 27001, including ISO 27017 and ISO 27018.
Weaviate
ISMS certified against ISO 27001, stated in the technical and organisational measures of the Data Processing Agreement.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Elastic Cloud
HIPAA business associate agreements available on all Elastic Cloud subscription tiers on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Weaviate
HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Elastic Cloud
Operates in compliance with GDPR principles; customers can request a Data Processing Addendum through a support case.
Weaviate
DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Elastic Cloud
Cluster data is encrypted at rest by default; TLS between Elasticsearch nodes and from the internet.
Weaviate
AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

Elastic Cloud
Supported on Elastic Cloud Hosted via your cloud provider KMS, but only at the Enterprise subscription level; the key cannot yet be changed or removed once set.
Weaviate
Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Elastic Cloud
Predefined cloud resource roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer, billing admin) for Hosted and Serverless; custom roles can be created on Serverless projects.
Weaviate
RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Elastic Cloud
AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link for Hosted and Serverless; GCP Private Service Connect for Hosted only. IP filtering can be combined with private connections.
Weaviate
PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Elastic Cloud
Elasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers under least privilege; containers have no means of communicating with containers from another cluster. Scope: container-level isolation between customer clusters; no dedicated-hardware option is offered on this page.
Weaviate
Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Security | Elastic ↗

    “Elasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers, configured according to the principle of least privilege, and with restrictions on system calls and allowed root operations. [...] Containers have no means of setting up communication with containers from another cluster.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Enterprise AI Database | Weaviate ↗

    “Dedicated Cloud A professionally managed AI database on single-tenant infrastructure. Consistent performance with no noisy neighbors, backed by SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

What the free plan includesWeaviate: One fully managed cluster per user, free forever and with no credit card, upgradable to paid at any time.
When the free offer endsWeaviate: Never — the Engram tier is billed $0/mo, free forever.
Retention windowElastic Cloud: No fixed window on Serverless: retention is priced per GB retained per month, as low as $0.017 (Logs Essentials) or $0.019 (Complete), and $0.005 for metrics.
Self-hostableElastic Cloud: Supported
Ingest price per GBElastic Cloud: As low as $0.07 per GB ingested (logs, traces, RUM) on Serverless Observability Logs Essentials; as low as $0.09 on Observability Complete, with metrics at $0.023.
Query priceElastic Cloud: No separate query meter on Serverless Observability: billing is ingest plus retention only, with egress 50 GB free then $0.05 per GB.
Max vector dimensionsWeaviate: 65,535 dimensions maximum per embedding vector in Weaviate Database, because the embedding is stored using uint16. Stated for Weaviate Database generally; the FAQ gives no separate Weaviate Cloud cap.
Similarity metrics supportedWeaviate: cosine (the default), dot, l2-squared, hamming and manhattan, set per vector index in vectorIndexConfig; the HFresh index supports only cosine and l2-squared.
Response time commitmentWeaviate: Severity 1: none on Free, one business day on Flex, 4 hours on Premium shared, 1 hour on Premium dedicated. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
PCI DSSElastic Cloud: PCI DSS listed among the certifications in the Elastic Trust Center, alongside SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Elastic Cloud or Weaviate?

Elastic Cloud: Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.

Weaviate: Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.

Free tier: Elastic Cloud or Weaviate?

Elastic Cloud: No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.

Weaviate: Yes

Should I choose Elastic Cloud or Weaviate?

Pick Elastic Cloud if Teams that need full-text search and observability on the same underlying engine, or that want the option to self-host later — Elastic's dual identity as a search platform and an observability platform is the actual differentiator against single-purpose competitors.

Pick Weaviate if Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

Provider pages

Elastic CloudManaged Elasticsearch, Kibana and Elastic Observability, hosted or serverless across AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.WeaviateOpen-source vector database with an always-free cluster tier and hybrid search included on every plan.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.