Sonic

Fast, lightweight search backend. Rust, ~30MB binary, auto-indexing.

by Sonic (valeriansaliou) ·Search · platform

Operational · 99.94% · 8ms · 78h ago

Official Verified Security 88/100 Quality 90/100 Last checked Aug 28, 2026

What it is

Sonic is a fast, lightweight search backend written in Rust. Single ~30MB binary, auto-indexing, typo tolerance (fuzzy search), geographic search, and identifier search. Used in production by Opera for browser search.

Why we recommend it

If you need lightweight search (think: autocomplete for an app, search for a static site, etc.) without the complexity of Elasticsearch, Sonic is the answer. The single binary is small and fast.

When to use it

Autocomplete / typeahead search
Search for a static site or app
Low-resource search (small VPS)
When Elasticsearch feels overkill

Quickstart

Run this in your terminal. Self-hosts locally with Docker or your preferred setup.

$ docker run -d --name sonic -p 1491:1491 -v sonic_data:/data valeriansaliou/sonic

Setup

**Docker:** ``` docker run -d --name sonic -p 1491:1491 valeriansaliou/sonic ``` **Config:** /etc/sonic.cfg (see the repo for full example). **Ingest:** sonic-ingest CLI tool.

Integrates with

ingest-clirest-apisonic-channel

Common use cases

→autocomplete
→static-site-search
→low-resource
→fast-search

Pricing

Free. MPL-2.0 licensed. Single ~30MB binary.

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