# alibaba/havenask

Havenask is a large-scale distributed information search system widely used within Alibaba Group

Repository: https://github.com/alibaba/havenask
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/havenask
Homepage: https://alibaba.github.io/ROCK/
Language: C++
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-04-09T02:46:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 57/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 76, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 1416, "days_push": 146, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1836, forks 352 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:42.675622+00:00)

## What it is
Havenask is a large-scale distributed information search engine developed by Alibaba Group, written in C++ and used to power search for services like Taobao and Tmall. It supports realtime search over hundreds of billions of records with millions of QPS/TPS, SQL queries, and a plugin system for customization.

## Use cases
- build a large-scale distributed search service
- run realtime full-text search over billions of documents
- query structured data with SQL through a search engine
- self-host a high-performance search engine like Alibaba's
- deploy millisecond-latency search with millions of writes per second
- customize search ranking algorithms with plugins

## When to choose
- you need massive-scale, low-latency distributed search with realtime indexing
- you want SQL-based querying over a search engine
- you need a proven engine battle-tested at Alibaba scale
- you want deep customization of search algorithms via plugins

## When to avoid
- you need a simple embedded full-text search library for a small app
- your team cannot operate Docker-based distributed infrastructure
- you want a managed search service rather than self-hosting
- you primarily need vector-only semantic search without keyword search

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: search-engine, http-server, database
- domain: databases, big-data, microservices
- platform: self-hosted, cpp
- tags: distributed-search, full-text-search, sql-queries, alibaba, realtime-indexing, high-performance, search, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- alibaba/havenask (main) score 57

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:42.675622+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:18:27.943627+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/alibaba/havenask (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:42.675622+00:00, sha 976f8cb86c62)
  - homepage: https://alibaba.github.io/ROCK/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:57:30.903375+00:00, sha b6d073fc1039)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.