# manticoresoftware/manticoresearch

Open-source search database for full-text, vector, and hybrid search with real-time indexing and SQL.

Repository: https://github.com/manticoresoftware/manticoresearch
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/manticoresearch
Homepage: https://manticoresearch.com
Language: C++
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: search-engine, search, mysql, sphinxsearch, cpp, stream-filtering, full-text-search, bm25, search-server, sql, json, api, database, search-api, hacktoberfest
Last push: 2026-08-26T23:25:26+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3354, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 19, "gap_med": 29.5, "n_releases_24m": 19}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 11956, forks 641 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:50.562935+00:00)

## What it is
Manticore Search is an open-source search database written in C++ that provides fast full-text, vector, and hybrid search with real-time indexing. It supports SQL and JSON APIs over the MySQL protocol and HTTP, positioning itself as a lightweight, high-performance alternative to Elasticsearch.

## Use cases
- add full-text search to my website or app
- run semantic and vector similarity search over embeddings
- self-host an Elasticsearch alternative with lower resource usage
- power product catalog and faceted search
- build autocomplete and fuzzy search suggestions
- do log analytics over millions of records
- perform geo and location-based search
- query large datasets with SQL over the MySQL protocol

## When to choose
- you need fast full-text and vector search with low latency and low memory footprint
- you want SQL/JSON query interfaces and MySQL client compatibility
- you need real-time indexing, replication, and sharding in a self-hosted search engine
- Elasticsearch is too heavy or costly for your infrastructure

## When to avoid
- you need the broader Elastic ecosystem (Kibana, ML jobs, managed cloud)
- you require a permissively licensed database (Manticore is GPL-3.0)
- your workload is purely relational OLTP without search requirements

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: search-engine, database, vector-database, http-server, api-framework
- domain: databases, big-data, analytics
- platform: windows, self-hosted, cpp
- tags: full-text-search, bm25, elasticsearch-alternative, hybrid-search, mysql-protocol, real-time-indexing, sphinx-fork, sql, search, natural-language-processing, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- manticoresoftware/manticoresearch (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:50.562935+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 2026-08-29T17:15:02.488111+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/manticoresoftware/manticoresearch (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:50.562935+00:00, sha 9bb38e6f8be1)
  - homepage: https://manticoresearch.com (fetched 2026-08-29T08:13:12.217743+00:00, sha f9eb0bffa6ac)
  - site_page: https://manticoresearch.com/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:13:12.227608+00:00, sha 7d60c138c022)
  - site_page: https://manticoresearch.com/install (fetched 2026-08-29T08:13:12.229527+00:00, sha 03954377602e)
  - site_page: https://manual.manticoresearch.com/Installation (fetched 2026-08-29T08:13:12.235920+00:00, sha 90efd128477a)
  - site_page: https://manual.manticoresearch.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:13:12.232330+00:00, sha f41fc0e7f157)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.