Meilisearch Full-Text Search

Key Features

• Sub-50ms search response times with built-in performance optimizations
• Automatic typo tolerance without configuration - handles up to 2 character mistakes per word
• Faceted search and filtering with automatic facet detection from document structure
• Custom ranking rules engine allowing fine-tuned relevance scoring based on business logic
• Real-time search highlighting and snippet generation for result previews
• Multi-tenancy support with API key-based access control and tenant isolation
• Visual index management through meilisearch-ui with drag-and-drop document uploads
• RESTful API with comprehensive JSON responses and OpenAPI documentation

Common Use Cases

• 1E-commerce product catalogs requiring instant search with filters for price, category, and attributes
• 2Documentation websites where users need to quickly find specific technical information
• 3Content management systems with large article databases requiring full-text search
• 4SaaS applications needing in-app search functionality for user-generated content
• 5Migration projects moving away from expensive Algolia subscriptions to self-hosted solutions
• 6Development teams prototyping search features before committing to complex Elasticsearch deployments
• 7Small to medium businesses requiring powerful search without dedicated DevOps resources

Prerequisites

• Minimum 1GB RAM available for optimal Meilisearch performance with medium datasets
• Ports 7700 and 24900 available on the host system for API and UI access
• MEILI_MASTER_KEY environment variable set for production security (minimum 16 characters)
• Basic understanding of RESTful APIs for integrating search functionality into applications
• JSON data format knowledge for document indexing and search result handling
• Sufficient disk space for search indexes (typically 1.5-2x the size of source data)

docker-compose.yml

1services: 
2  meilisearch: 
3    image: getmeili/meilisearch:v1.5
4    container_name: meilisearch
5    environment: 
6      - MEILI_ENV=production
7      - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}
8      - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
9    volumes: 
10      - meilisearch_data:/meili_data
11    ports: 
12      - "7700:7700"
13    networks: 
14      - meilisearch-network
15    healthcheck: 
16      test: ["CMD", "wget", "--no-verbose", "--spider", "http://localhost:7700/health"]
17      interval: 10s
18      timeout: 5s
19      retries: 5
20
21  meilisearch-ui: 
22    image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
23    container_name: meilisearch-ui
24    ports: 
25      - "24900:24900"
26    networks: 
27      - meilisearch-network
28
29volumes: 
30  meilisearch_data: 
31
32networks: 
33  meilisearch-network: 
34    driver: bridge

.env Template

1# Meilisearch
2MEILI_MASTER_KEY=your-master-key-at-least-16-bytes

Usage Notes

Individual Services(2 services)

Copy individual services to mix and match with your existing compose files.

meilisearch:
  image: getmeili/meilisearch:v1.5
  container_name: meilisearch
  environment:
    - MEILI_ENV=production
    - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}
    - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
  volumes:
    - meilisearch_data:/meili_data
  ports:
    - "7700:7700"
  networks:
    - meilisearch-network
  healthcheck:
    test:
      - CMD
      - wget
      - "--no-verbose"
      - "--spider"
      - http://localhost:7700/health
    interval: 10s
    timeout: 5s
    retries: 5

meilisearch-ui:
  image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
  container_name: meilisearch-ui
  ports:
    - "24900:24900"
  networks:
    - meilisearch-network

Quick Start

1# 1. Create the compose file
2cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
3services:
4  meilisearch:
5    image: getmeili/meilisearch:v1.5
6    container_name: meilisearch
7    environment:
8      - MEILI_ENV=production
9      - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}
10      - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
11    volumes:
12      - meilisearch_data:/meili_data
13    ports:
14      - "7700:7700"
15    networks:
16      - meilisearch-network
17    healthcheck:
18      test: ["CMD", "wget", "--no-verbose", "--spider", "http://localhost:7700/health"]
19      interval: 10s
20      timeout: 5s
21      retries: 5
22
23  meilisearch-ui:
24    image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
25    container_name: meilisearch-ui
26    ports:
27      - "24900:24900"
28    networks:
29      - meilisearch-network
30
31volumes:
32  meilisearch_data:
33
34networks:
35  meilisearch-network:
36    driver: bridge
37EOF
38
39# 2. Create the .env file
40cat > .env << 'EOF'
41# Meilisearch
42MEILI_MASTER_KEY=your-master-key-at-least-16-bytes
43EOF
44
45# 3. Start the services
46docker compose up -d
47
48# 4. View logs
49docker compose logs -f

One-Liner

Run this command to download and set up the recipe in one step:

1curl -fsSL https://docker.recipes/api/recipes/meilisearch-stack/run | bash

Troubleshooting