What is Azure AI Search used for?

Azure AI Search is an Azure managed search service offering full-text, vector and hybrid retrieval, formerly known as Azure Cognitive Search. It is a good fit for grounding AI assistants in company data and adding search to a custom application.

Is Azure AI Search free?

Yes. Azure AI Search has a free plan.

Is Azure AI Search open source?

No. Azure AI Search is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Azure AI Search include Trieve, Meilisearch and Manticore Search.

What are some alternatives to Azure AI Search?

Azure AI Search competes with Amazon OpenSearch Service, Algolia and Amazon Kendra. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure AI Search alternatives.

Azure AI Search: features, pricing and alternatives

About Azure AI Search

Azure AI Search, formerly Azure Cognitive Search, is a Microsoft Azure service for building search over private content. It supports full-text, vector and hybrid retrieval, and Microsoft positions it for powering enterprise RAG, giving AI agents secure and scalable access to knowledge.

The service connects with Microsoft Foundry features, including Foundry IQ for knowledge retrieval. Azure AI Search is a proprietary Microsoft service delivered through Azure with no self-hosted edition, and Microsoft documents its tiers, indexing options and pricing on the Azure site.

Key features

Full-text search over private content
Vector search for embeddings
Hybrid retrieval combining both approaches
Retrieval for enterprise RAG applications
Integration with Azure AI services

Good fit for

→Grounding AI assistants in company data
→Adding search to a custom application

Tags: azure; search; vector-search; hybrid-search; rag; ai-search; managed-service

Azure AI Search: questions and answers

What is Azure AI Search used for?: Azure AI Search is an Azure managed search service offering full-text, vector and hybrid retrieval, formerly known as Azure Cognitive Search. It is a good fit for grounding AI assistants in company data and adding search to a custom application.
Is Azure AI Search free?: Yes. Azure AI Search has a free plan.
Is Azure AI Search open source?: No. Azure AI Search is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Azure AI Search include Trieve, Meilisearch and Manticore Search.
What are some alternatives to Azure AI Search?: Azure AI Search competes with Amazon OpenSearch Service, Algolia and Amazon Kendra. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure AI Search alternatives.